Returning Favours
by eifi
Summary: Married to a monster for my friends to live in a fake peace, I really need to stop feeling dissapointed whenever I forget the fact that he doesn't love me. But that's what's scaring me the most... I'm starting to think that he does love me. ItaSaku
1. Chapter 1

**Well, I'll say this now. I got this idea from trying to fall asleep last night -.- At first, it was a branch off from another idea, which I can't say cause it will spoil part of the story, (Dont worry ;D It will probably be written out next chapter XD) So what happened was, I thought, hmmm... Why not use this idea to make Itachi single out Sakura? :O And I think my idea worked out pretty well. I just hope no one has the same idea as me! Otherwise I shall be named a copycat D:**

**Some notes before the story.  
1. I do not own Naruto.  
2. Sakura never met Itachi during the Sand mission. If worst comes to worst, imagine Tenten And Sakura switched places temporarily during that part of the mission  
3. Itachi has no illness :D Therefore he does not allow Sasuke to kill him and crap, and this leads to point number 4 :D  
4. This is said somewhere in the story, either in this chapter or the next or upcoming ones ;D ITACHI KILLED MADARA AT SOME POINT OF THE STORY! HENCE! SASUKE DOESNT GO PSYCHO ON US XD And cause of other things which become apparant later  
5. I DID NOT COPY THIS STORYLINE, (Cause Im sure there are other fanfics where Itachi forces Sakura to marry him, or when some other character in some other story/book/game/video/show/film/movie etc etc get forced to marry etc etc.) (No, I haven't had complaints yet ;D Im just saying in advance since I have a feeling it will happen somehow ._. Im unlucky)**

**Anyway :D Read and review people ^^;, I loves reviews ;D This chapter is just a tester for the actual story. If people don't like, I'll probs end it in the next chapter or two, if people do likey :O I shall write everything that I have planned out for this story xD**

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**Returning Favours**

Chapter 1

The Trade

Written by eifi

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Her name is Uchiha Sakura. Maiden name, Haruno Sakura. Funny how that all her life she had always wanted to have that special surname, the centre of her world had always been that raven haired boy until a few weeks ago. Yet, her husband _wasn't_ the one she had always desperately wanted to love her, and her husband definitely _didn't_ love her.

Sighing as she gazed out the frosty window, she smiled faintly at the sight of little children playing innocently. Thinking back slowly, she couldn't remember the last time she had had fun. No, scratch that. She couldn't even remember the last time she was _happy_. She longed to be out there, outside this prison of a house, outside the barricaded stone walls that her husband had commanded to be built, just so that no one could escape this joke of a 'peaceful village'. And only a few knew this, and those few were the ones who had survived the wars and rebellion, and those she had sacrificed her freedom for.

Laying out her arms on the window pane, she rested her face on it as she gazed out to the distant clouds, so that at least her face wouldn't get any frostbite. One of her friends had always like cloud watching, and sometimes she would watch them with him. Swallowing painfully, she wondered how he was doing. She knew he wouldn't be great, as he had to bear the full responsibility of her capture most likely, and she could already bet that the guilt was tearing him apart. Squinting as the sun peeped out of the clouds shadows, she shook her head nonchalantly to herself. She had never since the start of her imprisonment had she ever blamed Shikamaru for her capture. This had happened from her own decisions and her own actions, and she prayed that everyone else would understand that too.

Then again, it wasn't like she enjoyed this either. Sighing once again, something that had become a frequent habit of her during the last few weeks, she turned around as soon as she sensed someone else's presence. Looking at her visitors face blankly for a moment, she decided that she had nothing to say to him. Turning away as soon as she realised this, she tensed underneath her flower embroidered yukata as she felt him approach her.

Within a moment, he was behind her. His warmth radiating against her chilled skin and his breath tickling her ear, her body threatened to shudder from pleasure from the warmth. To anyone else, this was an act of love between couples, but with this man, there was no love.

"Sakura. Why are you wearing barely anything in such cold weather. You'll freeze!" He scolded, pulling her closer to him to share his body warmth. Instead of hugging him back like most couples would at this situation, she attempted to detach himself from her, almost feeling disgusted at the fact he touched her. He noticed this, but didn't care. He had a point to make and he would damn well make it.

"Sakura," He said, pulled her back towards him, knocking the wind out of her lungs and crushing her against him, "You promised to agree to **my** terms on the conditions that **you **made, and you will abide to those terms or else all your friends, all your villagers, and especially **my brother** will perish in extreme torture. And by these terms, it means that you need to look after your body. Just think, if they see you suffering they will lose all hope, they will rebel, and I will have no other choice than to kill them in front of you. It'll be all your fault _Sakura_."

He watched as she suddenly stopped struggling as soon as he mentioned his brother, and felt her face pale as he whispered those words into her ear. Of course, all his words were simple bluffs, he would never do such terrible things unless there was no other option, but she didn't need to know that.

Silence entered the room, as well as more chilled drafts. She was trembling slightly like a frightened animal, and her eyes were closed shut, as if anticipating the worst. Understanding how scared she would probably be feeling right now, he slowly let go of her, his hands slightly lingering at the side of her arms. Meanwhile, Sakura was in deep thought, almost scoffing at the fact she had almost thought he cared. Not even noticing the slight disappointment, she decided to remain still, her head filled with fear and worry.

Getting up, he headed for her wardrobe. He then realised the most likely reason for the fact she didn't wear anything more than her yukata, was probably because she _didn't_ have anything more than her yukata and a few shorts, shirts, skirts and underwear.. Hitting himself inwardly, he made a note to make it up to her later. He shouldn't have rushed to the decision that she had tried to freeze herself on purpose. No sane human being would do that after all.

Closing the wardrobe that was in front of him, he looked back at her. She hadn't moved at all. Sighing slightly, something that he also had picked up during the last few weeks, he headed over to the opposite part of the room, stopping before another wardrobe. Opening it, he pulled out the largest and warmest piece of clothing that he could spot within a second. Taking the hanger out of it, he then walked towards Sakura again.

Slowly, he placed the clothing over her gently, feeling her tense as he did. Proud of his gentlemanly act, he turned around and headed for the door, intent on buying her some new clothes. That is of course, until he heard her stutter back.

"I-Itachi… I… I don't want to wear this…" She stuttered, neither of them knew whether it was from the cold or from fear. Itachi preferred to think of it because of the cold. His gaze softening at her trembling form, he already knew the reason why she didn't want to wear his clothes. And it wasn't because they were out of fashion.

"Wear them for today, I'll be getting you new clothes anyway." He replied, and before Sakura could even open her mouth for another rebuttal, he interrupted her again, "Sakura. Don't. It's only fabric." And left without another word.

Soon after he left, she made sure first that no one was near, before bursting into tears. Wiping them away as much as she could, all she wanted to do was to get away from him, to run away to somewhere where he couldn't reach her. But he would always be able to reach her, because she wasn't strong enough to defeat him. She was bound to him by contract, by marriage, and by fear. She had no way of escaping from him, not even with slumber. He would haunt her dreams, and make her scream with fright from the nightmares. Then, whenever she woke up, she would feel so safe because he was gone, only to find that it was _his_ arms that were cradling her.

Many moments later, she had finally calmed down. Looking down sadly, the cold autumn wind took her by surprise, and chilled her to the bone.

Pouting, unsatisfied with the situation, she guessed she had no other choice than to take what she had been offered and pulled her husband's coat around her. It wasn't any different to anything else that she had done in the past that had related to him.

It had only been a week since she had moved in with Itachi, but their marriage had been decided from many weeks before.

She was now 18, still extremely young, but old enough to be of marriageable age. But it wasn't that which led to her downfall. It was the fact that Akatsuki had finally captured Naruto, sealed the kyuubi, and simply put, obtained world domination. Somehow, Uchiha Madara who was also known as 'Tobi' was killed during all of the feuds and war battles, meaning Itachi was to be given control over the fire country. Scoffing, she guessed the country was lucky that it wasn't Madara, since she could bet that he was much less sane than her current husband, and much more 'evil'.

When Itachi came to claim his reward, he was met with welcoming committee. That committee was based on whoever had survived from the failed mission to protect Naruto, and those who weren't there to protect him at all. Sad to say, that committee was small, and was only based of a few chuunin, a jounin or two and around 10 ANBU. The genins and the civilians were all told to hide quietly, as well as herself and many other extremely important characters that they couldn't afford to lose. Those people were part of the back up plan. The plan of rebellion.

Easily said, Itachi wiped the welcoming committee out in a few seconds, not looking back again at the ones that died before him. Instead, he continued on his path to the Hokage tower, and since then no one had dared to attack him.

Until of course, a week after Itachi's arrival, when they had formulated a proper attack plan against the Uchiha and gathered all of their supplies. Their rebellion plan was ready and complete. With Shikamaru as the mastermind and leader of the plan and Sakura as the main attacker, they had hope again. They had gathered the civilians, who were now all armed and ready just in case one of Itachi's subordinates or Akatsuki's henchman attacked them, all together, and Shikamaru gave a wonderful war speech, inspiring every single one of them. After him, it was Sakura's turn. To everyone in the village, Sakura was their treasure. Kind and beautiful, she had always did her best to help and comfort the people of the village. If she was taken or killed, they would have nothing left. And that was the problem that Itachi soon realised.

After giving another inspirational talk on how sacrifices had been made, and many more which will be made, she tried to cushion their pain in advance, just in case something _did_ go wrong.

Which it did.

Soon after the rebellion had started, the majority of them including Sakura had their asses kicked. They weren't dead, leaving suspicion to fill Sakura's mind. Her eyes shut, she could sense _his_ chakra approaching. In a quick scheme to punch him to the country of wind, she gathered all her remaining chakra into her fist, ready to launch her attack as soon as he came close enough.

He approached slowly, and Sakura could swear he was coming slowly on purpose. _Just one more step… One more step an-_

"Ufgh!" She cried in pain as he held her by the neck, crushing her against ground with his body. His gaze was daunting, his eyes never leaving her face. Feeling blood rise up her throat, she refused to lose her dignity in front of her enemy by coughing out blood. Losing the feeling in her left arm, the arm that she prepared to smack him with, the world started to feel dizzy as she felt her strength leave her. Eyes widening at him as she realised he was using medical ninjutsu to sap her chakra, she cursed inwardly as she knew he had copied it from when she had tried using it on him.

Looking down at the floor, she guessed that that was it for her. Strange how, she never got around to saying bye to her best friends… Ino… Tenten… They would have to live throughout this mess without her… She failed.

About to close her eyes, she stopped when she heard his voice.

"What is your name?" He asked, his voice sounding unusually caring for some who was about to kill her. She looked at him, and saw black ebony eyes, eyes that reminded her of someone that she held close to her. Feeling his grip on her neck loosen slightly, she watched him gaze at her, as if half expecting something.

Opening her mouth to speak, she found her voice wouldn't come. Instead, sticky warm blood trickled down the side of her mouth, across her chin and into her hair. Her eyes empty as she gazed at him, she tried to mouth the words at him.

Suddenly, she felt the world spin around her as he picked her up bridal style and jumped across a hundred yards within a second, dodging several kunai that had been aimed at Itachi, and only at Itachi. Raising his eyebrow at the fact they had not attached explosive notes to the kunai, he stared at the direction that the kunai had been sent from.

And there standing before him was Shikamaru, with many villagers behind him.

"Let her go." He said with false courage, but to no avail. Itachi could see through his act and could tell that the man standing before him was desperate.

"Why should I?" Itachi asked, acting as if he were interested. Shikamaru looked down to the floor, clenching his fists, before looking back up to see her condition. She was half dead. Inhaling deeply, he got down to the floor and bowed, the villagers following him.

"If you let her go, we swear we will not rebel against you…" Shikamaru said, fighting back the tears of failure, "So please… Do her no more harm…"

Itachi stared at that man and the villagers, and knew immediately that they were sincere. And secretly, he knew they were extremely lucky, as he had no intention to kill her.

Looking back at the half dead girl, he asked her once more.

"What is your name?" He watched her as she coughed more blood, earning glares and worried whispers among the villagers, "If you can't speak, mouth it to me." He said in a more gentler voice, almost giving the impression that he wasn't a monster, and that he was actually human.

Struggling to keep conscious, it took her everything she had to mouth those two words to him.

Staying silent for a moment, he closed his eyes to think. Watching his concentration bewildered her, how could anyone single handedly fight off this many strong people and have a serious decision to make think properly. Obviously, he could.

When he opened his eyes, they were still black, unconsciously making her more comfortable as he didn't activate the sharingan.

"Sakura.," He said loud enough for her to hear but not loud enough for the villagers, saying it in a way she had never heard her name be said before, "Marry me."

Her eyes widened at his demand, and if her throat wasn't the way it was, she would have gasped.

"If you marry me, promise to be well, at least pretend to be happy, then I won't kill your friends or your villagers." He explained, watching her try to mouth the words 'but why?'.

"If you're by my side, these people won't dare to rebel, and you can at least give the image that the village is in peace. I don't want this village to be ruled by fear, but I will use intimidation methods if I must. This is your freedom for their peace Sakura. Choose now." He said, as if giving her the option to choose either one. Which of course, she didn't. She had no choice.

Nodding, he set her down gently, watching her tense as he formed some seals. Putting his palm on her stomach and her forehead, he pushed some chakra into her, giving her at least the strength to move and heal herself. Still talking only to her, he told her that he would collect her within a month, after the preparation has been completed. He told her that even though she didn't want to marry him, he wouldn't take the joy out of a girl's wedding. The last thing he mentioned before he went back to the Hokage's tower, was that she was to tell the people of the village for the sake of their peace and well being, that he would not be a tyrant ruler, and that he would be fair and just. If she said it, then they would surely believe it.

And true to his word, he collected her in a month.

The trade had begun.

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Well, I hope you enjoyed it O: Please read and review T^T Like I said at the top, if people don't like it then I wont write as much as I will if people do like it XD If there are grammar mistakes or spelling or even a few tips you can gimme that would be great though xD *is just worried about the main storyline being sucky*

Also, please forgive me if the text has been moved/shifted/basically fucked up in any way possible ;D Fanfic edit/preview document sucks, and it literally rapes the file ¬¬ Yeah, it sucks.

REVIEW PEOPLE! IM A REVIEW WHORE! GET OVER IT XD I wanna see what you guys think :X


	2. Chapter 2

**First thing xD Im sorry if the story layout is fucked D= loves screwing up where words go and where lines go and also where titles or bold/italics/middle or left or right text goes XD **

**Second thing, sorry for not updating so much xD I haven't been feeling like it as much (All my baby chickens got murdered by a gay evil fucktard fox four days ago =[ But the grown up ones are ok). I managed to get my GCSE results back for the ones I have done so far (just started year 10) and found out all A*s so far :)**

**Third thing, gogo read my other itasaku stories, or at least the definition of being unfair. That is my fav itasaku oneshot written by yours truly :)**

**Fourth thing, you may wanna thank alina my awesome romanian friend for kind of making me wanna write again xD**

**Fifth thing, I don't own naruto ;D**

**Sixth thing, READ AND REVIEW PEOPLE! I AM A REVIEW WHORE! GET USED TO IT! REVIEW! NOW! More reviews = More daily reminders and temptation for me to update and makes me feel good D: You gets your updates for writing a 5 second comment (at least D:), I get my happy feeling special moments. Hence, reviews make everyone happy. :D**

**Seventh thing, I can't remember why I called this chapter 'The Trade', so just use your imagination :D**

**Eighth thing, ENJOY =)**

**Ninth thing, EDIT from 10-9-10, LOL I FOUND OUT WHY IT SAID THE TRADE XD Forgot to replace chapter 1's chapter name roflmao xD Yes, this proves it. I am a retard. **

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**Returning Favours**

Chapter 2

Temporary Ceasefire

Written by eifi

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_It had been so cold. Trudging through the muddy forest, she grimaced as she watched her socks get coated with even more of that thick smelly substance. Sighing soundlessly, she once again scanned the area for any incoming chakra, just to make sure that wherever she may be in the forest, it was safe to camp out. Her heart stopping as she felt a new unnoticed chakra force coming from only a few yards away from her, she gulped as she waited for it to attack her. Clenching her fists as a stinging bead of sweat rolled down the side of her face and successfully reopening a previously dried out wound on her cheek, she didn't know whether or not she would have the energy or chakra to fight back. In fact, part of her told her to give up and let the person kill her, she wouldn't have to put up with this continuous struggle to live._

_Moments passed and she released her breath painfully. Placing a palm on a nearby tree, she gulped as she wondered why she wasn't being attacked by the person who was more or less likely to be a ninja just like her. Knowing this, her common sense told her to take the initiative and kill the person first. If she did, she would have finally secured a place to sleep that would be safe for an hour or two. Sleep was precious to them at that time, and to have a whole hour of pure rest and peace during this war was equivalent to being a miracle. Not having slept for so long, the temptation to attack caused adrenaline to pump around her body, urging her to jump out and slit the throat of her intruder and finally claim her reward of bliss._

_Jumping out and darting towards her visitor, she pumped the last bits of her precious chakra and within seconds she was behind the person. _

_But that person wasn't standing, and nor was he conscious._

_Swallowing her guilt down, she leant down to the man and checked swiftly for any explosive tag traps. Finding none, she rolled the man over and almost gasped at the identity of the person she found. Or at least, what he looked like. _

_Brushing aside his dark bangs, if not for the slight subtle wrinkles that the man had probably gained from years of experience and the slightly tanned skin, he had looked exactly like _him_ but older and with longer hair. Looking away from the person in embarrassment, she felt disgusted at herself for both endangering the life of an innocent, and also at the fact she had felt so happy when she thought he was Sasuke. Looking at the unconscious man once again, she stood up and walked away, intent on finding firewood for them both to share._

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Opening her eyes grumpily, she guessed by the way her face felt like it was frozen, that she had somehow dozed off. Shivering slightly, she got up from the tatami mats where she had fallen asleep, and dragged her feet all the way to her bed. Sighing, she cursed the Uchiha for wanting to have such a bloody big house. What was the need for it anyway? It means either more work for her, or the fact he'll have to bring in some servants. And no way in hell is she going to do his housework for him. He could fuck himself for all she cared.

Shuddering from the warmth, she buried herself deep into the duvet covers. Thinking for a moment, she didn't understand why she was being so angry and spiteful towards him; he hadn't done her any harm apart from almost killing her those few weeks ago. In fact, he had even organised a beautiful wedding party just for her, even though she didn't even want to get married to him. Just as she was trying to tell herself to treat him a tiny bit more nicely and that maybe he wasn't as bad as she thought, his next action made her disagree completely.

Screaming when she felt hands around her waist, she jumped out the bed and instinctively put her fists in front of her in a defensive position.

"What the hell!" She shouted, her anger directed at the bed. She scoffed in amazement how he could just calmly poke his head out of the bed innocently and watch her as if what he had done wasn't embarrassing at all. In fact, if she didn't know beforehand that Uchiha's smirks are ten times bigger and ten times more arrogant, she would have thought that he was **smirking**.

"What's wrong?" He asked, acting totally innocent, rubbing his eyes as he did so.

"What do you mean what's wrong! You just openly **groped** me." She exclaimed, too angry to care that she was now out in the cold.

"Yeah well, you woke me up." He groaned, yawning a little before turning his back on her, totally ignoring her as he pulled the duvet over himself completely.

"Why the hell were you in **my** room anyway?" She argued, furious that her bed now would smell of him.

"Well technically, it's **my** house." He argued back, and she could actually feel him smirk underneath the covers.

Screaming in frustration, she resisted the temptation to throw the nearest object at him, which currently was a pile of female clothes. Wait. _What?_ Her thought track stopped, and the anger completely disappeared. Staring at them like they were some strange unidentified object, it took a while to figure out that Itachi had actually bought them for her.

Feeling a little guilty, she could kind of guess that they were expensive too, she could tell from a glance that they were made of either pure silk or very expensive materials. Sitting down next to them she pulled out a cardigan that looked warm, and wrapped it around her surprised that it fit extremely well.

"Do they fit?" She asked a deep muffled voice, interrupting her thoughts again. Looking back at them, then back at him, she replied by staring sarcastically at him.

"Whats wrong with them?" He asked again, his face finally emerging from under the duvet. Looking bored, he watched her with hidden amusement as she fidgeted awkwardly, before asking him how he had found out her clothing sizes. With a simple 'I looked on the tags of your other clothes' a sigh of relief escaped her lips. Then, an awkward silence entered the room as Itachi kept on staring at her, as if expecting something to happen.

"Uhm..?" She murmured quietly, hoping for him to stop staring at her. Itachi got the hint, and asked her again if they fit or not. She looked at him, frowning at him as if he were some sort of dumbass or something.

"I haven't tried them on yet." She said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Itachi however acted indifferently, and just kept on staring.

"And? Go try them on." He said impatiently, wondering whether or not all women were as slow as this one. Sakura knew that he was thinking this, but she didn't care. His attitude was pissing her off.

"Then get out of the room already and let me get changed." She said through gritted teeth, her eyebrows furrowing as the reason why she was originally so angry came back to her. It was the damn uchiha trade attitude.

"Why should I?" He asked, obviously teasing and mocking the pink haired girl. And it was working.

Absolutely furious with him, she didn't even _care_ if he bought those clothes especially for her, or the fact that he could kill her within seconds and/or include a luxury five star trip to a torturing paradise, grabbing the nearest solid and painful looking object, she lobbed it at him. Watching him duck and look back at the wall where the object had landed, he winced inwardly as the object has been practically lodged into the wall. Sighing, he guessed he could afford to let her have the room to herself as she got dressed.

Getting up, he revealed an astounding toned body, his yukata slipping off down his arms and revealing his frontal torso. As if he were strutting his feathers like a peacock, he walked with high confidence past her and through the door, sliding the door shut as he exited. But not before sending Sakura a deathly glare with his sharingan and a warning not to act so violently towards him in normal dark voice, effectively sending chills throughout her body.

Shivering slightly, she knew that this time it wasn't due to the cold. Once again for what would have been probably the nineteenth time that month, she resisted the strong urge to break up into tears and cry behind those sliding doors that he had exited from. With useless thoughts of her being encaged here, wishing she was with her friends still and begging God to save her somehow, this time she couldn't stop the tears from escaping.

Sniffling slightly, she looked miserably at the clothes that he had bought for her, and before she knew it, she was ripping them into shreds, crying her eyes out as she did. Suddenly, everything that he touched, everything that he breathed on, everything that had anything to do with him made her feel sick. Hiccupping slightly from her crying, she decided that she wanted to destroy everything in that room, everything around her, everything that belonged to him. After ripping her clothes to shreds, she saw pure red and started to obliterate the furniture, until nothing in that room was useful or intact.

Laughing to herself hysterically, she guessed she was finally going mad from all this abuse. She asked herself what else in that room wasn't broken, and she chuckled cynically at the answer. Her soul certainly was broken, but her body remained intact. Grabbing her kunai that she had been using to rip and destroy everything, she didn't even care anymore for her friend's happiness, her friend's freedom and her villages' peace. No, for her whole life she had been sacrificing everything for them. Risking her life to protect them, letting _him_ go because of their stupidity and unwillingness to go after him. And now, she was married to a _monster_ to make sure that they could sleep well at night. Well enough was enough, she wasn't going to take this shit anymore.

Bringing the kunai closer to her, she smiled as it came closer to her beating heart, but that smile immediately turned into a frown as she felt warm strong arms and hands around her. Struggling violently against his hold, he gripped her wrists tighter and tightened the arm that was around her waist, only after punching her in the stomach to stun her. Gasping with pain as he knocked the breath out of her, she bit back the tears that were forming and hung her head low. She would cry in his house, his home, his room. But she would never, **ever** cry in front of him. And with a low growl against her ear, she could tell that her _beloved hubby_ was way beyond pissed off.

"What the **fuck** do you think you're doing Sakura?" He said in a dangerously low whisper. She stopped attempting to struggle as the fears of the consequences hit her like a ton of bricks, and also because of the fact that he was too strong. When Itachi was answered with nothing but silence, he narrowed his eyes at her, before looking down onto the floor.

"Let go of the kunai." He ordered, but Sakura remained still. Pretending her disobedience was from not being able to hear him, he repeated himself, but in a more dangerous tone.

"Let. Go. Of. The. Kunai." He said in dangerous clear words. This time, she complied, and he swore he could feel her shiver slightly in front of him.

The kunai out of the way, he proceeded to let go of her wrist, which then hung limp by her side. At her blind spot, he formed a few seals then quickly pressed his palm into her forehead.

Draining her energy and chakra, she gasped as it took her all she could to even keep her eyes open.

Her body completely limp, she found herself being carried bridal style by Itachi out of her room and across the corridor. Her head resting against his bare chest, she watched weakly at the direction of where he was going.

Counting dazedly the steps that he took, he stopped suddenly in front of another pair of sliding doors.

Opening her eyes again and lazily scrolling them to the right, she realised that she was entering Itachi's actual bedroom. Glancing at it, she noted that it was slightly smaller than her own, and that there was hardly any furniture in there at all. Judging from that, she could guess that he wasn't home for much.

Feeling Itachi enter the room, she suddenly had a terrible feeling that something would happen that she wasn't going to like. And of course, it did.

Before it was too late to scream, she realised that he was carrying her to his bed. Laying her gently on the bed, she asked him what the hell he was doing, but instantly regretted it when he glared at her angrily.

"You don't have the trust or privilege to have your own room anymore. From now on you'll stay in the same room as me so I can keep a **constant** eye on you." He said, the last few words emphasised slightly with a dark smirk, letting Sakura's mind be filled with crazy and untrue fears and guesses.

Stripping himself of his yukata he slipped into bed as well, pulling a comfortable heavy amount of duvet on top of them.

Pulling her towards him, he left an arm around her waist and tried to drift off to sleep. Sakura on the other hand had other plans.

"Let me go!" She cried, trying to gain control of her body but failing miserably. He replied by pulling her closer to him, and even resting his chin at the top of the back of her head.

"I… I don't want…" She started, but found herself unable to finish the sentence. Unknowing that Itachi was watching her as she breathed heavily next to him, he sighed and shuffled slightly.

"Sakura. Go to sleep." He said. His voice wasn't angry now, and it was probably the closest thing to being pleasant that she would ever hear from him. But it still wasn't enough for her. She didn't _want_ to be here married to him. She didn't _want_ to live in the same house as him. She didn't _want_ to sleep with him, even if it was only innocent bed sharing. The thought of it disgusted her. For the reason that _he_ was his older brother, and the fact that sometimes, sometimes she would see _him_ instead of Itachi. The thought of staying with the man who destroyed her first love's life, and now also hers and many of her friend's disgusted her. Gazing miserably at the silk sheets that lay in front of her, she would have given almost anything just to go back into her own room, into her own bed, where the _monster_ wasn't. So she tried again.

"But…" She urged on, trembling slightly at tears that she couldn't stop from falling. Praying to God that he couldn't see them, she waited in silence for him to respond. Unfortunately for her, when he took one of his arms that was around her waist from her and wiped her tears with his thumb, she immediately knew that he knew she was crying. In her weakened state, more tears fell, and she suddenly couldn't take it anymore. Crying her eyes out, she felt him roll her over and hold her at his chest, stroking her head gently as she wailed away.

For the first time in ages, and to the person she hated the most, she was crying like a baby, unable to take any of this anymore. Sobbing away, she didn't want to fight anymore; she didn't want to suffer anymore. All she wanted was to have some peace and quiet, to be somewhere where she didn't have to fight or worry anymore. And at that moment, that place was in _his_ arms.

Moments later, she had finally stopped crying, and instead sat there quietly, not understanding what had just happened. They had stayed like that for quite a while, and it was only until Itachi moved up and got out of bed that Sakura noticed that he was there again. Watching him tiredly, she guessed she must have looked terrible from his view, but he said nothing but a simple, "Go to sleep Sakura," before tucking her in then leaving the room wordlessly.

She was so confused. She didn't know what to do anymore, and her husband certainly wasn't helping. Why did he let her do that? In fact, why did **she** let him do that? And why hadn't he killed her yet for the huge disobedience that she had shown him earlier? Her head pounding and her vision blurring, she winced in pain as she realised that she had probably caught a cold earlier. Already in a pretty comfortable position, she guessed that since he left the room that he would probably not return for a while, and that it would be pretty safe to fall asleep.

And she did.

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**Hope you enjoyed the story :) Now spend at least 5 seconds of your life giving a review to the dear writer of this fanfiction to make her feel a tiny bit special :) In return, you get cookies and also faster updates :D If not, me and alina will come after you with a masamune and a chainsaw :D You can guess what will happen then.**

**Anyway c2, (that's supposed to be a heart btw xD since the less than and 3 don't work here) REVIEW! D=**


	3. Chapter 3

**First of all, I once again apologise in advance for if the layout of the story gets fucked up :D the sites document editor sucks ass. Believe it DX**

**Second of all, I devote this chapter to my beloved friend Rida, of whom's birthday is in 2 days, right before mine which is in 3 days xD So now I demand either a happy birthday review, a lets make the author of this fanfiction feel happy review, or even better, BOTH XD**

**Thirdly, I loves you people so much XD Thankies for your reviews :D and as I promised, I spent the majority of my freetime writing this chapter rather than doing my business studies homework XD I hope you enjoy this chapter, although part of it I felt meh-ish on writing it, (I found out that some of my friend's friend got beaten up really badly today and after that I felt meh-ish in general)**

**Fourthly, you know the drill :D REVIEWS MAKES EVERYONE HAPPY! You get your faster updates (eg this one came within a week and a bit), and I get to feel happy and special when I get an email to my inbox saying how much you guys like my story :D It costs you a click, a few prods on the keyboard and 5 seconds to send the review, and you get an awesome update :D Awesome eh? XD**

**Fifthly? I hope you enjoy this chapter :) And review* *coughs***

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**Returning Favours**

Chapter 3

Superstition

Written by eifi

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Sipping his coffee, he groaned inwardly at the chain of events that his wife had just put him through. The clock ticking away, the sounds vibrated and felt pained and prolonged in his eardrums, he hadn't slept at all since the incident with Sakura and he had had a nagging feeling biting at him to not let himself fall asleep either. Trusting his instincts, something he had been forced to learn to do so well since his life as a missing nin started, he knew better than to ignore them. In fact, he had probably of been forced to trust them much earlier than that, maybe even when he had entered the league of chuunin. That said, he trusted his instincts a lot, knowing that they were probably the only things that he could trust completely. And because of that, he definitely knew that something was probably going to go wrong.

Sighing, he traced the rim of his coffee mug with the tips of his icy fingers, and glanced down to the warm danky brown liquid. He hated coffee and he hated bitter things in general, sweet things were much more appreciated by him. Peering over to the fridge opposite the table, he resisted the urge to open it and take out the supply of dango that he had been saving for a rainy day. He leant back into his chair, and silently he wondered what he should do with his wife. He knew that she had every right to be as angry as she was at him, but that still didn't stop him from feeling frustrated at her actions.

He had already sent maids to clean up and repair the room that she had destroyed the previous day; he was one to sort things out as soon as he could. But Sakura was one problem that he couldn't solve with ease. One moment she would be as calm as a lake on a silent winter night, the next she would be as boisterous and aggressive as… Well… as aggressive as _Sakura_. She was so unique that no amount of words that he could probably ever think of would be able to fit her description, **that** he was sure of. He was being pushed into an edge by her, and he didn't like it at all. He didn't even know whether or not anymore if it was still a good idea to keep her there or if he should just let her go and let her live happily without having to stay with him. Shaking his head slowly and resting his elbows onto the arm rests that his chair provided for him, he stared up into the ceiling as he already knew that he would never let her go. To him, she was an ally that could prevent him from having to cause more needless killing and misery for the people, and also a secret memory from the past.

Again, for what could have been the hundredth time that evening (not that he had been counting), he sighed as he started to make random guesses of why Sakura would even try to attempt suicide.

Making a list in his head, he narrowed the options down to the fact that maybe it was a bit too much to piss her off and remind her of his brother so soon after all that she had been through. Staring at the clay coffee mug that sat in front of him thoughtfully, he knew what it felt to be at war with countries and being stuck in the middle of several feuds within countries. He probably was one of the only people who knew almost exactly what she was going through now, if not more.

Sipping his coffee again, he winced as he had temporarily forgotten that the coffee was still boiling hot, and in turn burning his tongue slightly. Sitting his elbows on the table, he gently rested his forehead onto his palm and let out a sigh of momentary relief at the natural ice pack he had made with only his hand. The drilling pain in his head dispersing away, he suddenly felt a distant chill pass through his body, causing him to stand up and immediately use his chakra to sense whether or not Sakura had woken up yet. Feeling no movement or flurry of chakra of confusion from his room, he sat back down and placed his hands around his coffee, once again warming up his hands.

Huffing out a cloudy sliver of breath, he wondered why the hell Konoha was so damn cold. It had been cold before but never in his childhood years there had it ever been this cold. Thoughts drifting back to when he felt that chilly draft, he wondered whether or not he had left a window open or something.

As he got up from his chair, somehow an even better idea popped up in his head. He stood up and walked out of the kitchen, and walked into a spare room of which Sakura's belongings that hadn't been destroyed or brutally mutilated was put into. Opening drawers and cabinets until he found something that looked somewhat like a contact book, he smirked only slightly in triumph of his discovery.

His mind trailing back to Sakura for a moment, he shrugged as an image of her yelling at him for touching her stuff entered his mind, almost making him chuckle as he imagined her throwing her shoes at him. If he got caught, he could just smoothly state that he now had to get rid of anything sharp and dangerous that she could use to aid her in her life ending plans.

Opening the contacts book, he found out that it was filled with addresses just as he had hoped. After searching through more of her belongings, not caring whether or not he was disturbing her privacy anymore, he found out that she had kept many souvenir items that had probably been gifts from her friends. Looking at the majority of the gifts that had been given to her, and also skimming through random letters that Sakura had kept, it seemed that a woman named Ino was her best friend. Weighing out his options, he debated in his head whether or not it was a good idea to let her visit her friend, or if her friend was even alive still. Making a mental note in his head to research into the matter, he decided to continue his quest to close whatever window or door that may have strayed open.

Finally walking out of the kitchen after he had checked the majority of the other rooms, he grimaced as he realised the last room that he hadn't checked was his own room. There were two problems with that. One, Sakura was in it. He didn't even want to attempt to face her after the previous night before. He hadn't even known what had persuaded him to comfort her or let her cry in his arms, but whatever it was he didn't want to face it yet. The second reason, was because if there was a window or door open in his own room, where _Sakura_ was _supposed_ to be sleeping, then there was a huge chance that something had happened that he wasn't going to like.

And knowing his luck, his suspicions were probably right.

Groaning out loud as he slid the door to his room open, he almost face palmed himself at the irritation that his wife was dumping on top of him.

Staring at the empty bed, he swiftly grabbed a coat and a backpack, stuffing another coat for Sakura into it and also a few supplies. If she had run away only half an hour ago, then she couldn't have gotten far. Despite this, Itachi knew better and knew that there was no such thing as being over prepared.

Closing the window in his room and locking it, he ran through the house and out of the front door, locking it as he exited. For once, he agreed with Sakura about how useless big houses were. But orders were orders, and the Leader of Akatsuki had 'given' him this house, and what was he to do? He was only human, and there was almost no way that he would refuse such a 'generous' offer. Shaking his head for a moment as he dashed past the streets of Konoha, he scolded himself for harbouring such useless and unimportant thoughts.

Activating his sharingan and sending chakra to his ears and nose, he began to track Sakura by scent and by sound.

Catching a faint wave of her vanilla scent, something that he had remembered from when he tried to comfort her at night whenever she had nightmares, he followed her scent and hid his chakra discretely.

After a while, he finally caught up with where she had been walking. His fingers tracing the brick walls that Sakura had walked by, his eyes trailed down to the blood stained floor. His breath hitching for a second, he didn't want to admit his heart almost skipping a beat at the image of Sakura being beaten up or killed, or even worse, raped. Looking at the blood stains, he had never before felt sick at the sight of blood, excluding _that night _of course. His throat dry, the urge to vomit increased as the images continued to play within his head. Forcing those thoughts out of his head, he once again reminded himself that there were more important things to be thinking about, like where Sakura was.

Sending chakra into his nose again, his previous session broken as his concentration was smashed into pieces. He found out that her scent was now mixed with a more disgusting and danky smell. His eyes revealing crimson as he opened them, he darted off into the direction of their scent.

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Groaning inwardly, she winced as she opened her eyes. Accustomed to the darkness that her eyelids provided her, the sudden bright lights that shone upon her blinded her temporarily, distracting her thoughts from the fact that she was tied up to some sort of pillar with the worst headache ever. Her face hurt, and she somehow knew that she had probably gotten a black eye or two, in addition to many assorted types of bruises on her body. Not wanting to think negatively, she began to comically debate whether or not this certain blue bruise matched another one which looked pretty green.

Biting her lip, she finally could say that she was pretty fed up with how life was treating her. The one time she had actually managed to even taste a bit of freedom, she manages to get kidnapped by two huge missing nin, who were much stronger than her in her currently weakened state. Now, not only was she beaten the crap out of after she bumped into them, they decided to bring her with them and hold her hostage as they thought that her _dear beloved husband_ would want to give them some sort of payment for her. So here she was, sat down in front of a pillar in some type of warehouse that probably had been pissed on by some creature, all tied up.

And that wasn't even the worst of it!

The thing she was scared shitless of was Itachi's reaction to all this. He probably thought that she had run away from him or something, no scratch that. He **did** think that she had run away. And because of this, she didn't even know whether or not if she wanted Itachi to either not show up or show up and take her back. Sakura had never seen Itachi truly angry before, and she didn't want to see it either. She thought that the normal calm one was already frightening enough.

Glancing at the missing nin, one was facing a door which meant his back was to her, and the other was nowhere in sight. That one was probably laying traps or something. Shivering slightly she closed her eyes once again, and she decided to feign being asleep so that she could avoid another beating. She knew there was nothing that she could do to escape here, her chakra had been absorbed daily by Itachi as an extra precaution in order to prevent her from doing anything that may jeopardise their deal. Since he usually did it in the mornings, she guessed that he hadn't done it yet.

Thinking to herself calmly she debated whether or not if she would really want to stay here, in this disgusting piss hole where she could be beaten up every day or even worse, or if she wanted to stay in the nice, clean, _somewhat_ safe house with her husband who seemed sane for the moment.

Choosing the latter straight away, she concentrated on leaking out her chakra subtly and slowly, so that the missing nin wouldn't notice but hopefully Itachi would.

After waiting 5 minutes, which had felt like an hour to her in this freezing cold stinkpit, she decided to start using some initiative.

Using her chakra to sense Itachi's own chakra, she found out that he was actually quite near her, which meant she had been knocked out for quite a while. Or just that he wasn't even human and that he moved at the speed of light.

Estimating that in a few more moments he would arrive, she opened her eyes and searched the ground for anything she could throw at the missing nin to catch his attention. Summoning fire to her fingertip with her chakra, she carefully and slowly burnt through the ropes that held her. She could almost laugh, she hadn't even been tied up with a chakra seal. Her hand grabbing a rock, she threw it at the missing nin's head, who didn't manage to duck in time.

Biting her cheek in attempt to giggle at the sight of one of her captors curse loudly at her and yelling at the other to come back, she started to count the seconds until Itachi's arrival.

Thinking to herself how easy it was to get loose, and how the rock had hit the man's head so easily, she wondered how the hell they had managed to become missing nin.

Her heart pounded as she soon realised the answer, that they were just mere civilians. But it was already too late to save them. Itachi was already here.

Goosebumps arising, not from the cold but from pure fear, she watched as her husband entered furiously. His sharingan activated, she felt her heart drop as it reminded her of Sasuke, but shook those thoughts out of her head.

Ripping the rope from her legs and waist, she started to run to him and yell at him, to try to tell him that they were just civilians and they were not of any harm, apart from abducting weakened kunoichi and beating them up senseless.

But by the time she had come near him, in a blink of an eye both were dead, falling to the floor.

Her eyes widening, her feet stopped on the cold ground, looking at the dead civilians that her husband had just killed mercilessly.

Her throat gone dry, she swallowed down air as a part of her knew that that could have been her. Instead of cowering in fear, something snapped within her and she roared at Itachi.

"What the **hell** did you do!" She screamed at him, earning a somewhat surprised look from Itachi, or at least the most surprised face that Itachi would let show.

"What?" He asked irritably, he was also pretty pissed off. He had come rushing to save her believing that the worst had been done to her, and here she was yelling and screaming at him, as if he was the one in wrong here.

"You just killed two innocent civilians who had nothing to do with being a ninja!" She shouted, her face fuming red despite the icy cold wind that breezed through.

"Innocent? Innocent! They fucking beat you up and you're calling them innocent. For all we know, they could have fucking raped you." He shouted, equally as angry now. He now somewhat understood why his dad would get into such huge rows with his mother, because women were so fucking annoying and way too sympathetic that they didn't know what was even right and what was wrong.

"They didn't fucking rape me you fucking perverted asshole! And I was weakened because **YOU** like to absorb my chakra every fucking morning!" She retorted, glaring at him angrily.

"And whose fault is it that you got kidnapped huh? It was **you** who decided it would be a great idea to run away from me. In fact, I shouldn't have even come to save you since you hate living with me so much." He fumed, not noticing that he had reminded her of a precious piece of information, and in turn looked at Sakura in confusion when he felt all her anger suddenly turn into confusion as well.

"You… You came to save me?" She asked quietly, now looking to the floor guiltily and if he hadn't known better was slightly pouting too. Sighing, he now knew that he would never understand women.

"Yes," He stated, allowing their previous argument to disappear with her anger, "I found the place where you had gotten beaten up and I thought you had been…"

Watching her look up guiltily at him as he trailed off, he sighed once again and pulled the backpack from over his shoulder. Opening it and taking out the coat that he had remembered to pack for her, he cursed inwardly as some energy bars threatened to fall out of the pack. He had been in such a rush that he forgot to pack his supplies orderly.

Handing the coat to Sakura, he waited until she wrapped it around her before handing her an energy bar, knowing that she had probably not eaten and was freezing cold. Throughout this, Itachi noted that she hadn't had any qualms with wearing his coat, nor taking the things that he gave to her. Hoping that it was because she had finally realised that he wasn't a threat rather than because she was ill or something, he pressed a hand on her forehead and on his own just in case it was the latter. Fighting a tinge of disappointment when he found out that she **was** ill, he proceeded to lift her over her shoulder. Earning a shriek from his wife, he ignored her as she pounded against his back and proceeded to return home.

"What are you doing! Let me go!" She shouted in his ear, hoping that she injured his eardrums in the process. She got nothing as a reply apart from a mid hop to make Sakura bounce up slightly. Annoyed at his and every other male creature's habit to show off and to prove that they are the best, she shoved down and buried all previous respect and awe that she had had for him when he saved her.

Five minutes passed in silence and they already arrived at their home. Sakura, who could only see where they had come from because she was facing the opposite direction as Itachi was walking to, started squirming as soon as she saw the familiar sign post that had their names carved into it.

Waiting for him to let her down, it never happened. Hitting his back slightly as to let her down, he turned to look at her and told her to stop it.

"Let me down," She said as she kept on hitting his back, her body tired of resting on his shoulder already, "We're already home so you don't need to carry me anymore…"

"You're ill, you haven't eaten today, you've been beaten up badly and I'm not going to let you try to walk, end up fainting and ending up breaking a leg or two." He stated calmly, reaching into his pocket with his free hand to grab the keys to the house. And until he had said it, Sakura hadn't even realised how awful she felt, and how much she wanted to drop to the floor and sleep.

Thankfully, shortly after Itachi got in and locked the front door, he let her rest her body on his bed. Watching him drowsily getting up again to probably get some band aids, she didn't have enough energy to stop her eyelids from shutting completely, and found herself dreaming of warm blankets and the scent of rain.

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**Mmmmm, guess what the scent of rain is off 88D Although I haven't mentioned it yet in this chapter, it shall come soon when the more itasaku parts break in. **

**And as I said earlier, j00 people need to review :D It takes you 5 seconds to review, less than that if you can type fast and have fast internet, and it makes me feel happy and special and more inclined to give you an awesomer and faster update XD**

**I intended to make this chapter longer, but like I mentioned earlier I feel kind of down since like I just witnessed 2 people get beaten up in my school (once on friday last week, one in monday where this guy got his head kicked in and stuff) and heard about my friends' friend being beaten up yesterday -.- (tuesday). **

**Anyway :) Happy birthday Rida 3 And a happy birthday to me for the day after hers XD Imma be 16 ;D**

**Oh, and if you read carefully there was a little hint on whats to come next chapter in the story.**


	4. Chapter 4

**LOL! THIS CHAPTER TOOK SO LONG XD And I rushed the ending because I couldn't take it anymore x_x Im sorry for the crap ending of this chapter XD**

**Sorry for the late update, I've had family troubles and pet deaths and school stuff and hugeeee writers block for the past few weeks. I did start the chapter as soon as I uploaded the previous one, but I could only manage to add bit by bit. The reason why? This chapter is supposed to be a bridge between the Sakura hating Itachi's guts to the Sakura slightly likes Itachi now xD because whenever I read an ItaSaku, or a anythingSaku, one second they're either friends or enemies, then suddenly they are in love. To me, expressing the characters feelings and knowledge is an important part (of the 5 a day, lols) of a story, and especially explaining WHY Sakura suddenly doesn't hate Itachi. I'm going on here but this is why it took so long to update, it was really hard to bring Ino in x_x (Don't ask why but I'm weak when people have to talk. I always get this ghost image of my year 6 teacher telling me, IF IT DOESN'T PROGRESS THE STORY THEN DON'T WRITE THE NARRATION FOR IT')**

**Please review people xD If its positive then I'll be overjoyed xD If it's negative then I'll still be overjoyed xD It shows me where and how I can improve, and also shows me you actually read my story :)**

**I don't own Naruto ;D**

**Hope you enjoy the chapter 3 The updates should be much faster after this xD****

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**Returning Favours**

Chapter 4

Familiarity

Written by eifi

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_She watched him wake up and held her breath unconsciously from suspense. Her hands making a small trail in the crumbling earth as she eased herself upwards, she walked a few metres away from him before kneeling down again in front of her backpack, getting a canteen of water out of it and unfastening the cap. Hearing a deep groan erupt from the throat of her company, she held the canteen in front of him as if offering it to him. His eyes not open yet, when they did open she held back a silent gasp as his eyes were almost exactly like _his_. Burying her disappointment, she offered the canteen again, but the man ignored her and instead distanced himself away from her._

_She recognised his caution within a second, and knew that it was perfectly acceptable. This man probably had his village destroyed by ninja like her, and he probably hated her more than anything. She knew this, but she still didn't care. She wasn't those ninja, and she would never be one of those ninja either. Her cause was to help those who needed help regardless of the situation she was in. She was one of those who would gladly give her life for someone else who had hopes and dreams like she had, because they and herself were the same._

_So when he tried crawling weakly away, she got up and walked towards him until his back was against a tree trunk, and offered once again the canteen of water._

_She could hear him sigh through his nose as he looked down at his lap, before slowly taking the canteen from her and putting it to his mouth. After taking 2 big gulps, he took it away from his mouth and stared at it blankly, before looking at her with the same amount of interest._

"_What are you doing here?" He said, his voice croaky but still deep and calm. His words resounded in her head and echoed, filling her with dread as she remembered back to _his _words swiftly, the buried memories finally resubmerging._

_When she didn't reply, he asked again in a more serious tone; which, if she didn't see the totally calm face that came along with his words, she would have had almost thought that he was angry. _

_As he said it, she looked at him tiredly, and stated that she really didn't know. Letting her knees slump down to the floor, she decided to sit in front of the man, and told him that she really really didn't know. She expected him to look at her weirdly, but somehow she knew by the way those onyx eyes looked at her that he had understood what she had meant._

"_Is your home being destroyed by the war too?" She asked quietly, looking tiredly at the gravelly floor next to her. He stared at her at that, noting the way she used the word 'too'. After a while of thinking, he guessed she didn't recognise him at all, and that if he took the initiative he could attack her and silence her before she made a commotion or become aware of who he actually was. But something in him made him shake away that idea, and to instead play the part of a lost villager, struggling in the war, though it could have been because of the fact that he was tired and fed up with fighting._

"_Yes. And yours?" He replied slowly, watching her reactions carefully. He could never be too cautious. But instead of a straightforward answer, she laughed a bitter laugh. Even though it was bubbly, part of it made him cringe with empathy, knowing that there was obviously nothing funny to laugh about._

"_It is. Kind of. In a way, it was already being ruined before the war. Now it's in the process of being turned into rubble." She said it as if it were a joke, as if it didn't matter to her at all, as if it was something to laugh about. He understood her distress, having been put through it many a time, but said nothing about it._

"_You're kind of lucky… You're not a ninja, so you don't have to be put through this, but you kind of have to since you're a guy and all…" Sakura knew she was speaking nonsense, to a complete stranger too. But she didn't care, she believed that she had a right to become mad and crazy in this war. With all her friends gone and dead, there was hardly anything to care about in the world, her home being the last thing on that list. Home wasn't home without them._

"_Put through what?" His tone was sincere. He was now interested in this young kunoichi's view on things, he now wanted to know how close her view would be to his._

"_All this senseless fighting… Fighting for a cause that you don't believe in, accept or support. Fighting against enemies who used to be your friends, all because of a few individuals who are scared of losing their power, and another set of individuals who want to gain power. To me, it's stupid. People are dying every day because of this war and they could care less. In the end, all they are thinking about are themselves, and technically so am I." She sighed after she confessed the hypocrisy of her words, before looking back at the man in front of her._

"_That's true. But war is inevitable in this world. The walls that people built around their villages were meant to protect them, but from what? The walls hide their secrets, their families and their lovers. But that in turn creates paranoia and hysteria, and other countries and villages start building walls and separate themselves from each other. They stop being friends and instead start attacking each other from the fear that they will attack them first. Slowly and slowly, allies will get involved and wars will start. The borders that separate countries, the walls that separate villages, the languages and codes that people make to hide things from people. All of this was originally to protect people, but instead it causes war. And as long as this continues, the concept of war will never end in the ninja world." He said carefully, taking another gulp from her canteen. He knew that she was perfectly right, but he wanted to see her whole view on this, it wasn't every day that he met someone intelligent enough to be able to understand that this war was unnecessary._

"_That's right but… Don't you just wish for somewhere where you can feel safe for once? Somewhere where there aren't any major battles, no threats, no worries. Just somewhere where you can feel at peace." She asked him, her eyes tired and her heart heavy._

"_Isn't that called heaven?" He joked back. She glared at him and he apologised._

"_I'm sorry, but on a more serious note. What makes you so sure that letting the enemy reign control won't make your peaceful ideal come true? They may seem like bad guys to you, but it's the same for them. To them, you're probably the bad guys." He said, watching her soak up his words like a sponge. _

_It took her a while to answer, but she did. "I can't disobey my orders, and neither can I betray the object that my friends died trying to protect. If we do lose, but it ends up okay, then that would be wonderful, but the chances are that won't happen." She said, her eyes lowering to the floor again._

"_Well… How about this then…" _

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Her vision clouded with pain, she moaned painfully as her legs, her arms, her _everything_ hurt. She instantly regretted it when she opened her mouth though, her lips dry and hence letting parts of her lips crack open painfully, leaving her whimpering helplessly. Her eyes readjusting to the sharp sunlight as she cursed the sun, she failed to notice the approaching pitter patter of footsteps, though soft. Her body unable to move, her thoughts felt sluggish and murky, adding in confusion as she felt her body being lifted up into something warmer, and hell of a lot more comfortable than what she was just resting on. Her eyes closing sleepily, she leant into whatever was holding her, and gave in to the temptation to just rest there. Her captor didn't seem to have any problems with that, and instead brought his arms around her, his touch warm but gentle as he seemed afraid to hurt her. When he received no sign of pain or disdain for his contact, he tightened his hold on her ever so gently, resting his cheek on the top of her head. Totally at peace, she found she didn't want to open her eyes again as the warmth was just too comfortable, and she felt so safe and content in this person's arms. It was quiet, but it was calming, both completely content with their calm and silent tacit understanding.

Hearing him sigh, she wondered why he did but left that thought to drift off, her senses and logic flying away as her mind floated off into space, only realising a little later when he distanced himself away from her that this was actually real.

To her dismay, her source of warmth softly lay her onto the bed, chuckling slightly as she pouted childishly and gripped a part of his shirt when he tried to escape free. Her head still cloudy, it took her a while to properly understand that she was now pulling, and clinging onto, Uchiha Itachi, said evil person and her own self proclaimed ruiner of her life. Sighing as he felt her push him away as hard as she could, which to be honest wasn't at all that hard since her body was currently in an extremely weakened state, he wiped away all previous smiles from his face and braced himself for the moments to come, hoping that his own emotions wouldn't be shown through his face.

Her arms wearing various expertly wrapped up bandages, and her legs wearing the same fashion, her face seemed to be the only odd one out, wearing a heavy red blush on her cheeks. She looked at him confusedly, searching for any hint of emotion in his face but to no avail, and all of a sudden she coveted Ino's skill to act casually in the most awkward situations, even if it did mean making a total fool of herself. Hesitating before she looked away, she just prayed that he didn't notice the evidence of her embarrassment. Looking down and letting her coral hair fall in front of her face, she noticed that he had effectively placed her onto the bed just now. Judging from how the duvet was half spread across the floor, she had guessed that she had had an adventure in her sleep that had led her violently to the floor.

His previous actions confusing her and pretty much distracting her, it took her a while to distinguish the sharp pain that ran through from her gut to the back of her neck. Her hand darting to the top of her spine, she whimpered in agony as the pain wouldn't stop, her knuckles turning white as she tightened them as hard as she could manage. The pain was agonizing, almost forcing tears to form in her eyes. Thankfully, Itachi formed a few seals and placed his palm on her spine, releasing his chakra into her and stopping the pain. It wouldn't be as good as her own medical jutsu, but it was enough to block out some of the pain from her body for the meantime, at least until her wounds had healed.

"Are you okay?" He asked innocently, once again the thought of him actually caring for her drilling dangerously into her head. Denying that mentally, she nodded weakly at him, though it wasn't so convincing when her knuckles were gripped so tightly that they were almost snow white. Her breath hitching slightly, whether it was because of the overwhelming pain in her spine or if it was because Itachi reached out for her, we would never know. But when he brought her closer to him, holding her against his chest and again and pouring chakra into her spine, unknowingly she exhaled, the pain subsiding.

"Sakura. Can you heal your injuries?" He asked quietly, not letting the chakra stop flowing into her. She nodded timidly and he let herself pull back slightly. Watching her peel away the layers of cloth from around her body, he managed to realise what her intentions were just before she showed anything too revealing. Coughing slightly, he looked away and told her hurriedly that he'd leave her to it, and that he would come back in a few hours.

Finally alone, she allowed herself a rushed sigh of relief before getting on to work.

Forming hand seals, she knew she should start with her spine first, knowing that she could become permanently paralyzed if she didn't heal it quickly. Her eyebrows furrowing as she placed her hand over her bare skin, slightly surprised about how much damage they had done to her. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, she could have been mentally scarred by a genjutsu user or two, or even had every bone broken in her body simultaneously by some other random missing nin, but it wasn't good either.

Several vertebrae had been dislodged, some broken and some nerves damaged. Immediately starting to heal them and set the vertebrae back into place, she mentally made a note in her head to heal her ribs and legs too, some of her ribs were broken and part of her leg bone cracked. When she had ran towards Itachi previously (she says previously as she had no idea how long she had slept for), she had probably increased the overall damage of her right leg.

Not before long, her spine and ribs were okay, but her leg was still pretty fucked up. But unfortunately, time had flown away and 2 hours of her freedom was already up, as was the same case with her chakra. Not wanting to move her leg much, as it still hurt like hell, she lay down onto the bed tiredly, shutting her eyes as she felt the side effects of having used so much chakra at once which she hadn't used in so long.

Shivering slightly, she had forgotten to put on the extra clothes that had magically been put on her before she had woken up earlier, and got to work piling up the layers. Satisfied with herself decently covered, even if she didn't dress herself properly like she had been before, she lay back on the bed on her left side, making sure her damaged right leg was on top.

Attempting to drift off to sleep, she found she couldn't as lingering thoughts slowly and repeatedly drew her away from her dreams. Her eyes shut but her eyebrows crease, she eventually gave up on her endeavours, accepting the fact that she wouldn't get to sleep without driving those thoughts away. So she sat up slowly, opened her eyes and looked to her side. To the right of her there was a set of drawers, a slashed out konohagakure hitai-ate there on top and a few letters of which she had guessed were from his organization. Her eyes drooping slightly, the tiredness still evident in her lengthy yawn, her thoughts traced back to her husband, and the actions that made her so confused.

Why was he acting this way towards her, why was he acting as if he cared, as if he had a heart and was actually human? Why did he even _bother_ to save her, knowing full well that she had ran away from him and pretty much treated him as dirt? Why didn't he seem to care when he acted so coldly to her, yet looked pretty much heartbroken whenever she pushed him away? These were the things that she just couldn't understand; her husband was just way too cryptic. She would never understand what he was thinking, and a part of her didn't want to understand either. A part of her just wished that when she married him, when she was forced to live with him, when he asked her to marry him, that he _was_ exactly the monster that his past and her friends claimed him to be. At least that way she would have no guilt from hating him, she would have no worry that that what she was actually hurting and wanted to hurt was a human being, not a monster, and above all else, she wouldn't have the chance or temptation to replace Sasuke with Itachi.

Saying that, she prayed deep in her heart that she would never be retarded enough to replace Sasuke for Itachi, no matter how alike they may seem. Sasuke was the one that she had loved those many years ago, not Itachi, and she hoped that her mind wasn't so weak as to replace and forget about him as soon as the chance came by. Her fingers gathering pools of silken blankets in her hands, she absentmindedly clenched it as she wondered where he was right now. Itachi had mentioned it during a row a few days ago, but she could never tell whether or not he was lying. Pushing that matter aside, she made a mental note to somehow find out later.

Her hands bored with playing with the duvet, she covered her face with her palms and took a deep breath. It tormented her to even think about these things, a part of her even afraid that Itachi could even read her mind and later on torment her further at her thoughts relating to him. As silly as her paranoia sounded, sometimes Itachi really did manage to make it seem as though he were reading her mind, handing her things just before she reached out for them, explaining things before she asked what they were or why they were there and many more things.

Even so, there was still a more sane and realistic part of her that knew that she had been giving obvious signs of what she was about to do. For example, once Itachi had forced them into eating dinner together, something of which she had always wondered why would he had even wanted to dine with her anyway. He had ended up cooking for the both of them, Sakura was still too scared of him to do anything, (not as if anything had changed from then though). In the end, it resulted in them both arguing with each other, Sakura then refusing to eat with him. This then ended up with a scared and hungry Sakura, and a pretty pissed off Itachi who then worked on getting revenge by eating his delicious looking sue york faun in front of her (A/N Chinese roast pork with rice, much yummier than plain old british ones xD). By the time the aroma hit her, the urge to relinquish her pride and to apologise for her various doubts about his cooking increased. She didn't know what type of face she had put on, but it ended up with a delicious plate of food in front of her as a reward. Unconsciously smiling, she guessed as she recalled back the memory that that night hadn't been too bad, even if she wasn't there in her own free will.

Shaking her head again, she took a deep breath before telling herself that her husband was a _monster._ He was not nice, he was not human, because a man who murdered his own clan in cold blood for the reasons that he did, _couldn't_ be nice, and _couldn't_ be human. She kept telling herself that, that there was no way that any of this was genuine, and that this was probably just an act or scheme to gain her trust. Itachi _couldn't_ be a normal, sane and gentlemanly human being like he had acted towards her oh so many hours ago. He _couldn't_…

Her thoughts were interrupted though by a series of knocks on the door, followed by a simple, "Sakura? Are you decent?" from the main subject of her previous thoughts. A bead of sweat trickling down her forehead as her heart stopped, she gulped as a part of her actually believed the fact that he was reading her mind. Her blood leaving her face, she stayed silent until the voice enquired again, "Sakura? Are you in there?"

"Uh… Yes." She murmured, quickly fastening any loose bits of cloths to make sure she really _was_ decent. Luckily, she found she was safe, and soon entered Itachi with his normal calm look on his face. He looked at her puzzledly as he noticed her guilty looking face, her eyes looking away with him and her eyebrows slightly lifted. Opening his mouth to interrogate her, he paused and instead shut it, smirking slightly at her to get a rise from her. It definitely worked too, a guilty blush raging across her cheeks. Now infinitely more curious than suspicious, he decided to prompt a clarification from her.

"Sakura… What did you do?" He asked, making the most educated and likely guess that she had done something. But as he said it, he noticed a huge relaxation of her muscles, and also a breathy sigh of relief.

"Nothing…" She replied, much calmer and relieved that her guess was wrong. Inwardly, she prayed that he would drop the subject, she didn't want to let him know about her own slight suspicion, even if it _was_ right. Her husband didn't quite believe her though, so he prompted her even more.

"Then why do you look as guilty as a kid who just stole sweets from a sweet shop?" He asked, smirking as he spoke, the words flowing out of his mouth like smooth honey.

"Uh…" She trailed, now knowing that he wouldn't drop it. She considered lying, but she knew that she would be digging her own grave. Sighing, she murmured under her breath, "Do you so happen to be able to read minds?"

His reaction? A deep chuckle that resonated across the room, followed by a simple shaking of his head. "Not quite, unfortunately. But maybe _she_ can." He added, his eyes moving from Sakura to another part of the room, as if to emphasize his point.

Sakura looked in confusion at him, looking around in case there was a random person also in the room that she hadn't noticed before. Upon finding nothing, she gave up and asked, "She?"

His reply was merely an amused grunted 'Ah,' of which he looked to his side to something that wasn't visible behind the doorway and walls, and inclined his head towards the room where Sakura was in.

When Sakura saw what appeared in the doorway, she shouldn't believe her eyes. Her shocked face was immediately replaced by a huge happy smile, one that Itachi noted was quite charming, and her eyes seemed to shine as she saw her dear beloved friend ran towards her, returning the same old smile that she remembered the blonde to always wear before the war.

The fact that this was real hit her only when her friend rugby tackled her into a hug, thankfully dodging her broken leg, hugging her so tightly she was almost worried that she would suffocate. Screaming in joy as she hugged her friend back with twice as much force as her friend used on her, she failed to notice her smirking husband close the door quietly and left them to do something else.

After tons of screaming, they finally settled down and sat opposite each other on the bed, gasping for air as they recovered from their supreme laughing session. Neither of them spoke, neither of them knowing what to say. Ino seemed to be worried about that, but Sakura couldn't care less. Her friend was _alive_! Not even just that, she was _here_. She wasn't alone anymore, at least not for the short while that Ino could stay there with her. Hugging her once more, she decided that maybe there really was a kind spirit in this world.

"Sakura…" It was Ino who started, hugging Sakura tightly back though not as hard as before, "Are you alright?" Sakura looked up at her when she asked that, slightly distancing herself from her, and noticed that her friend's gaze was upon her leg. After knowing her friend for such a long time, she could tell straight away what she was thinking. But she didn't want to guess in advance just in case.

"Yeah of course… Why?" She asked, smiling at Ino as she said it as an extra attempt to show that she was A-Okay. But her friend's gaze didn't falter, and Sakura's attempt to try to reassure her didn't work, her broken leg lying limply across the bedsheets and her tattered body told their own story.

"Sakura… Tell me the truth… He hurt you didn't he?" She said sadly, her gaze lifting from her bruised and broken leg to her bruised cheeks and slightly slumped shoulders. Sakura however, could only stop the rolling of her eyes when she told herself that she was only saying such things because she cared for her.

"He didn't… I tried to escape to the village for a bit of freedom… And I got attacked by some people… He… He _saved_ me." She said, part of her realising that he _had_ saved her and that she was as surprised as Ino was as she reassured her. She even grabbed her friend's hands and squeezed them slightly to reassure her even more. It wasn't until then until she saw her friend's appearance. Ino looked terrible. She had dark rings under her eyes, as if she hadn't slept much, and her usual sparkling and glowing blue eyes were now dull and bloodshot. Her hair wasn't shining either, just dull like the rest of her. She looked even worse than Sakura in some ways, and her face filled with worry as she realised this.

"Ino… What happened to you?" She asked concernedly, and that was when Ino couldn't take it anymore.

Her blond friend hugged her and let her face rest at her shoulder, crying her eyes out. She was crying so much, and between waves of her cries, Sakura could just about make out that she was begging for forgiveness. Sakura held her, and told her that it was alright. She tried her best to reassure her, but Ino couldn't stop. Sakura's eyes softened, and her heart sank as she witnessed her best friend crying in her arms from the guilt of allowing her to marry for their freedom. She tried to tell her that it was ok, but she stopped after she realised that she would probably feel the same way if it had happened to her.

Moments later, after Ino had calmed down, Sakura brought out a tissue box from inside a drawer next to the bed. Ino pulled out a bunch and blew her nose thankfully, getting more to wipe her teary eyes. She took a deep breath again before apologising once more. Sakura shook her head, telling her not to apologise anymore, she had no need to.

"What's _really_ wrong?" Sakura asked, Ino needed to tell her herself otherwise she would never get over this. Ino knew that too, and her gaze dropped onto the silken sheets that they sat on. With a deep sigh, she finally answered.

"I should never have let you go." She finally stated, her voice serious and her eyes teary again, looking away from Sakura and biting the inside of her cheek to try to stop herself from bursting into tears again. Sakura looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to carry on. She didn't have to tell her friend to carry on, Ino already knew this. "I knew it from the moment that you came back all beat up from the battlefield that something bad was going to happen, and you didn't tell me until the day before the wedding." Ino said sombrely, she changed tactics and resorted to pinching her index finger really hard to fight back the tears.

"I shouldn't have let you go, I shouldn't have let you marry him… You don't know how many nights I've spent worrying about you, scared to death of the things that he could have been doing to you, I was so scared that… that… he could have…" Ino couldn't help it, the tears started flowing again, but she kept going on.

"Sakura… If you hate it here, tell me, we'll run away together. It was mine and Shika's fault that you got captured, and it was our fault that you're here now, married to _him_. I don't know how we'll do it, but Shika is smart, we can do this. All you have to do is tell me, we'll think of something. We got you into this mess, and we'll get you out. Sakura… Don't… I don't want you to be hurt anymore, I can't bear to see you suffer for our sakes." She couldn't continue anymore, and Sakura took this chance to step in. Rubbing her back gently, she saw before her her best friend being torn up with guilt that didn't belong to her in the first place.

"Ino…" She started, but was interrupted once again by a sniffle and a sob. Smiling slightly, the fact that her friend was now crying in her arms instead of herself crying in Ino's was slightly amusing, the nostalgic feeling that Sakura felt made this event feel slightly light hearted even if it was the total opposite. She waited again for Ino to interrupt her once again, but when she found that she didn't she carried on, unaware of their hidden eavesdropper who was discreetly hiding in the corridor that the door led out to.

"Ino… He's never hurt me since that time when we attacked him, and if you think about it he had every right to defend himself. Even if he has a temper that I can't predict when it will burst, or even if I can't understand what he's thinking at all, he has never tried anything to hurt me intentionally." She said, looking carefully into Ino's eyes, showing that she was telling the truth.

"But… at the day of your wedding you looked so sad… Look at your leg… Are you absolutely sure he didn't do that to you? He didn't touch you anywhere? He's an Uchiha for goodness sake… They're all assholes…" Her words were just distant murmurs, said like a child who knew they had lost an argument and instead from their immaturity decide to make excuses.

"Ino…" Sakura scolded in a mock angry tone, "I already told you. He _saved_ me from the guys who did that to me. And he wouldn't do the types of things that you're thinking of anyway, he's not the type to and he has no reason to either." She said to Ino in a very matter-of-factly tone. Ino just looked at her whilst pouting slightly, before whispering a short, "Do you think he's gay then? I had my doubts about Sasuke," which earned an annoyed stare from Sakura and an even more annoyed but silent sigh from the person who was having his sexuality questioned.

"Ino!" Sakura scolded her, amazed that her friend even had the guts to try to say that her husband was gay. But then again, it could be true.

"It could be true Sakura! All of the guards around this house are men!" She said, and Sakura hit her forehead.

"EVERYONE who has a house to guard makes sure they have male guards. What about your father when you were threatened to be kidnapped! According to your statement that means your father is gay!" She told her, the annoyance rising. Itachi had to fight himself to stop himself from laughing.

"Well… Gimme 3 good reasons why I should think that he isn't gay then." Ino said, she was never one who could think of a comeback to an insult. Sakura just sighed, and started thinking of some points.

"Well… He doesn't walk gayly. Normally you can tell by the way they walk." Sakura pointed out, and even though it was a weak excuse, Ino decided to accept it out of good charity. Itachi just closed his eyes and breathed in slowly, making a mental note to find out how a gay walks.

"And? Anything else?" Ino asked, almost certain of her victory.

"Why are we discussing my husband's sexuality anyway!" Sakura asked, realising finally that she had gotten lost in Ino's pace.

"By changing the subject you therefore lose, right forehead?" Ino smirked, earning another glare from Sakura and reminding her why she used to want to throttle her friend. Ino knew that Sakura didn't like losing, especially against her.

"Ugh fine. Since he married me, a GIRL, that means he is not gay." Sakura stated with a proud triumphant smirk.

"Yeah but, that could be a cover up. Just because he married you doesn't actually mean he's into girls." Ino teased, this time choosing her words carefully to avoid saying the obvious 'He didn't marry you because he loved you'. But Sakura already knew and understood that.

"Unless of course… He actually likes you?" Ino whispered, and this time not even Itachi could hear her naturally loud and boisterous voice.

"What!" Sakura shouted out, before Ino cupped her mouth and told her to hush it in case Itachi _was_ listening in on them, which of course he was. Thankfully though, Itachi had already gotten bored of eavesdropping, content with the fact Sakura didn't look at him and see a monster.

"Sakura, what if he didn't actually hate you? What if he actually seriously liked you?" Ino asked, her tone serious and her gaze fixating. Sakura instantly knew that Ino was being serious, but wanted to know where the hell Ino would have gotten that idea from. So when she asked, she found out she had hit on the right target, and watched as Ino averted her eyes.

"What happened?"

"He asked me an hour ago if I wanted to visit you." Ino said, as if that was enough to explain it. Unfortunately, it wasn't.

"And? What's so special about that that means he loves me?" Sakura whispered, she hated whenever Ino tried playing matchmaker, _especially_ when it was a dangerous S rank missing nin who could kill her ten times over in a second.

"Because he _asked me if I wanted to visit you_. Don't you get it? He actually _asked me_ if I _wanted to_ visit you."

"I still don't get it!" Sakura pouted, she hated not knowing things, and she hated being agitated over Ino not getting to the point fast enough.

"Because when he asked me, and then saw that I was busy, he looked like a heartbroken little puppy!" Ino explained, she had to constantly remind herself not to raise her voice too loud.

"That doesn't mean he likes me! Plus, you were just saying how much he must have hurt me and beaten me up earlier!" Sakura scolded again, before gasping in shock as she realised that her friend wasn't telling her the whole truth.

"Ino… Were you lying to me earlier? Did you plan this all?" She asked as she looked at her friend in disbelief. Ino just shook her head and grabbed Sakura by the shoulders.

"Of course not! I was just trying to make sure that he wasn't lying."

"What?" This didn't make sense anymore.

"He told me before I got here that you had been injured, and asked me to be gentle and not to touch your wounds."

"But yo-"

"Let me finish!" Ino butted in, and when Sakura became silent and calm Ino continued.

"He told me that, but I didn't know whether or not to believe him. Everything before that I said was real, and so were his words too. And now I can tell that he seriously cares for you Sakura. You'd be blind not to notice." She explained, her face showing concern as Sakura looked dismally to a wall.

"You have to think about it Sakura…" Ino said, before pushing up the sleeve on her left hand to see her watch.

"Sakura… I… I'm sorry but I have to go now." Ino said, pulling Sakura's hands in her own as she assured her that she'd come to visit her again soon.

"Ino! Don't go… Please… It feels like so long…" Sakura begged, not wanting her best friend to leave her with such confusing thoughts.

"Gomen…" She said, giving her a final hug before getting off the bed, and exiting the room after waving.

Sakura looked dismally down at her hands, Ino's warmth disappearing rapidly as she felt cold all over her body. Sighing, she didn't want to think about the words that she had said. She wasn't an egotistical person, quite the opposite actually. And she was even shyer around the subject of relationships. And there was no way, ever, that she was going to believe that her husband actually liked her.

Being a logical person, she tried to reassure herself through facts. Yes, facts. Those lovely things that pull you down to reality again. Making a list in her head, she started to list down the things that proved that he had no interest in her whatsoever. It was a silly thing to do and she knew it, but she needed her sanity back. It was the only thing she had left other than mindless daydreams.

The first thing she listed down was the fact that they had never met before. That pretty much ruled out any chance of him liking her. Already starting to cheer herself up, she decided to continue and think of the next ones. Her reasons ranged from tiny things like the fact that he always scolded her for small things, to huge things like when they had first met and kicked her ass. Unfortunately for her, she had thought ahead and knew that there were all good reasons for them, like how whenever he scolded her it was because it was either unsafe or unhealthy for her, or because she had 'forgotten' to eat again.

Putting her hands in her face again, she moaned as she knew the next hour would be a long one.

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As I explained earlier in the author note at the top, I rushed the ending xD Like I said, this chapter is meant to show how Sakura starts not hating her hubby.

Review people, tell me what you think XD It was a chore to write this chapter because I had to write tons of narration and had to attempt to show why Sakura will not hate Itachi as much in the following chapters xD As usually in romance fanfics with Sakura, one second they are just friends, the next they are in love and like woah o_O

I'll update faster I hope, it'll be easier now I got the hard stuff out of the way xD

Oh, forgot, no offence to gays in this, it was just a joke :X Tell me if its really offensive though, I'll make it less harsh DX *Has no problem with them*

See you soon :D


	5. Chapter 5

Hey, I know I said this would be like 15k, but I got bored halfway through writing chapter 5. It happens when I write (or try to) hugeee long chapters. This is like, half of what I wanted to write for chapter 5, so expect another 10k words for chapter 6 :)

I hope you like this chapter, I liked the first half more than the second part of this chapter, my writing style makes things get laboured when I write too long things XD So I may have been writing mumbo jumbo ;D

Oh and I have tons of exams soon so chapter 6 might take another bit of time. Also thanks Ines for helping me with the kimono part :)

REVIEW PEOPLE XD REVIEWS MAKE ME HAPPY D=

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**Returning Favours**

Chapter 5

Field Trips

Written by eifi

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Sighing, even though she had hoped to have a few extra hours of solitude and reflection of the recent events and ideas what Ino had thrown towards her, as soon as she took away her hands from her face, she shrieked in shock and almost fell backwards when she was met with her husband's face right in front of her own. Luckily, her leg didn't get even more agitated as he pulled her body back towards him, so that she didn't actually fall off of the bed, _again_. She wanted to shout at him and ask him why the heck he tried to shock her like that, but stopped as a blush appeared on her face, his curiosity rising as he noticed her face go beet red. His head cocking to the side slightly, he decided to feign ignorance to whatever she was blushing too, and forced himself to believe that the red colour in her face was because she had probably hurt her leg again.

Lifting her slightly from under her armpits, he made sure she was in a more comfortable and laid out position, before laying her leg out in front of her, causing her to wince uncomfortably. "Can you not heal it?" He asked innocently, his onyx eyes boring into her, and she could have sworn that if she didn't look away straight after, she would have burst into tears from the major confusion and the feeling of being helpless. She didn't know why, but the way that had asked her so caringly compared to the way that she had been thinking about him only a few moments ago made her feel sick and guilty, and all she wanted to do at that moment in time was to cry her eyes out again. But she knew that she had already done too much crying over the past few days, and that she needed to stop it. She wasn't one of the most powerful kunoichi's in Leaf for crying in front of others, she had earned her respect the hard way and she wasn't about to ruin it. '_Apart from the fact I had my ass kicked by two humoungous non ninja people.'_ She told herself, her step by step ladder of confidence crest fallen as soon as she had thought up that sarcastic comment.

She knew he knew that she wanted to cry, but he did her a favour by instead looking at her leg whilst talking to her, knowing that that was probably the issue at hand. Feeling guilty as she knew that he was one to mind his manners, and that one of them was to look directly at the person they were speaking to as a sign of respect, she apologised wordlessly in her head. He would never know that she had apologised, but it was good enough for now. Suddenly, she realised that she hadn't replied yet to his question, and that also was probably unnerving him. She didn't know why, but somehow every reaction and action that he made made her heart jump or twist in either joy or sadness. And she _definitely_ didn't want to know why.

"I don't have enough chakra…" She murmured as she finally replied back to him. His eyes still looking at her leg, as if calculating how much damage had been made to it, he stood up from the side of the bed and rested his knees on it. Coming closer to Sakura, she felt her heart thumping as he came closer, close enough to be able to feel his body heat, or maybe it was just she was just overly aware of him. Slowly and gently, he placed his palm over her forehead and asked her first before pushing his own chakra inside of her if it would work if she used his chakra. When she nodded, he nodded back in silence and started with the donation. Somehow, or maybe it was just the fact that he had a fire affinity, the chakra took away all of the cold inside her and filled her up with a pleasant warmth. Her mind halfway across the borderline of daydreams and reality, thankfully the sane part of her reminded herself that she was _supposed_ to be healing herself.

Ignoring Itachi's calm gaze that had been set upon her, she formed a few hand seals before placing her hand on her leg, feeling for where the bone had been broken. After successfully estimating the damage done, she used his chakra to push the chipped shards of bone back into place and set it there with a final concentration of molded chakra. Using his chakra to quickly regenerate her own bone cells and the skin around it, the bruising slowly faded off and her leg was as good as new. Smiling to herself happily as she could finally sit without any pain in her leg, she sat elated before Itachi stopped the chakra flow and sat next to her, as if he were to say something important. Which she knew was probably going to happen anyway.

"Sakura… Gomen…" He started, he looked away from her and looked to the top right of the room, his eyes scrolling upwards before looking down at his lap and then back to her with a serious stare. Whatever he was supposed to say was probably going to shock her, so she braced herself. "I didn't want to bring you into this, but the Leader planned and invited the both of us to a New year's celebration party. I would have tried to refuse if it were anyone other than the Leader, but his partner had insisted that they celebrate the New Year… The first when Akatsuki rule over…" He continued, as if nervous and wary of the fact that she despised their very existence. But before she could rebut, he continued. "They also want to know how close we are, as a married couple they'll probably try testing us," before continuing, he huffed out a brief laugh at something he was probably thinking, "Pein and Konan are serious romanticists, and they'll be seriously pissed if they found out why we really did marry." He finished, ending with a neutral face that Sakura hated, a face that she couldn't read nor understand what he was thinking about.

He looked at her edgily, as if expecting her to lash out on him. She and he both knew that that would probably not happen, but this was something neither of them had been expecting apparently, and that would mean that they would think of a solution. Fast. And the only solution that Itachi could think of would be a solution that Sakura wouldn't like at all. So this time, he'd let her think about it, and let her give her own opinion first. That way, he could avoid both of them getting hurt unnecessarily.

He watched her reactions, and gazed as she brought her knees up to her chin and hugged them as she looked down to the bed sheets. She stared down hard at the silken fabric, before huffing out a breath and raising her eyes slowly up to him, looking at him sheepishly with the slightest hint of a blush on her cheeks.

"There's no other choice then is there…" She said looking down slightly sad, as if she had just lost a battle. Her words hit her like a ton of bricks, and instantly she felt sick to her stomach. She didn't want to act like his loving wife, and she didn't want to even be near him, especially not after all that had happened recently. She guessed that Itachi knew this, but didn't want to force it onto her, which made her even more annoyed in the sense now it meant that she was _choosing_ to act lovey dovey with him. Refusing to groan out loud and bury her head under pillows, she looked away childishly and murmured to him that she'd be at least attempt to associate with him in a non aggressive manner. When she said this though, Itachi burst out laughing, and Sakura could no longer deny that his laughter was anything but pleasant to her ears. But she would definitely, never, **ever** tell him that. At least not whilst she was sane and sober.

"What's so funny?" She asked in an annoyed tone whilst glaring at him, causing him to laugh even more.

"You are." He said whilst his laughter continued, slowly bringing a small smile to Sakura's face. Fighting the small twitch at the corner of her mouth, she cursed the fact that laughter was contagious. Glaring at him even more, Itachi finally stopped in an act of courtesy, probably thinking that she had taken it as an offence and that it would be better if for now he didn't act so friendly towards her. Even he knew that if he pushed her too far and confused her too much that she would one day snap and finally have enough.

Content with the fact he stopped laughing at her, she asked him when they had to leave. Having expected Sakura to continue enquiring why he was laughing at her, he threw that thought aside as he shrugged and guessed that she really didn't care what he thought of her. When he answered as soon as possible, she murmured quietly to herself but loud enough for him to hear, "So that's why he let me heal my leg." He looked at her helplessly as he fought yet again the urge to laugh at her. It was pretty amusing watching such a high ranking kunoichi act like a child, and quite cute too. She didn't seem to believe him though when he told her that he couldn't help it, and that he only just got the message inviting them. She just huffed and pushed his excuses away with a nonchalant 'Yeah yeah.'

Itachi didn't take notice of her sarcastic tiny comments, and instead continued by telling her that she should pack soon and that they would hopefully leave in a few hours. Making a note that Itachi really didn't wait around for these things, she asked him why couldn't she not just go as she was currently. Itachi looked at her puzzledly before stating that they had to travel to the Hidden Village of Rain, believing that that would be all that she needed to understand why she had to pack. When Sakura then looked at him cluelessly as if his previous statement didn't make the slightest difference as to why she did have to pack, he sighed and guessed that it would be best for him to do the packing _for her_. But a second thought almost made him blush beet red as he forgot that he'd have to deal with her undergarments too, so instead he told her one last time to pack. She pouted in response and asked why since they could just speed there within a few hours. Itachi looked at her as if she had said one of the dumbest things he had ever heard causing her to glare back. He simply stated, "We're travelling by horse since I'll be confining your chakra."

Wanting to argue back at him and to tell him that that would be stupid, he continued with a darker tone, "You've tried to commit suicide behind my back, you've tried to run away behind my back, and you really expect me to give you my trust and trust you with your full amount of chakra?" The way he had said it made Sakura enter a more sombre and depressive mood, the guilt accumulating up and pinning her down like weights. Of course, she tried to ignore the blatent underlying tone of care, but she ended up failing.

"Gomen…" She said quietly, looking down at her hands as she said it. He knew that she was serious in her apology, and decided to make things easier for her by changing the subject. But she interrupted him once more before he could.

"But… I really didn't try to run away…" She added quietly, her words serious as was her face. Itachi raised an eyebrow in curiosity and let out a breathy huff.

"So you getting caught and beaten up in the middle of town was..?" He asked calmly, not wanting to scare her and make her not want to continue. He wasn't angry at all, and he hoped that she knew that too. He knew that since she said it in such a manner, she must be telling the truth. Even if he didn't trust her with her chakra, he trusted her at least that much. Plus, her vibrant and normally truthful nature meant that she was pretty bad at lying, as well as her actions and her expressions showed her emotions really easily.

"…" She opened her mouth to speak, moving them as if to say the words she wanted to, but found her articulation skills had left her. But when he asked her to continue in the most gentle voice she had ever heard him use, the words came back to her slowly but hesitantly.

"I suddenly remembered something that Naruto had that I gave him before… I just wanted to see if he still had it in his house." She said quietly, still somewhat scared of his reaction to this. Instead of yelling at her like she half expected him to, he watched her silently before speaking.

"After we come back we can go to his old house then." Itachi said carefully, going straight to the point. Sakura was not expecting that from him at all, especially from him. Even more so, she knew that his words weren't comforting or sweet but somehow against her will they still managed to assure her and comfort her. She guessed that maybe deep in his heart, if he had one, that he _might_ care, or feel the slightest bit guilty over Naruto's death. Her mood lifting, she smiled softly into space as she recognised his kind attempt, and started to have a second thought about him being completely evil. Smiling to herself, she supposed she could list him down at 99.99% evil and 0.01% a sort of decent soul for now at least.

"Arigatou." Her voice was light and laced with warmth, as was her apology. Itachi had been watching all of her reactions, and couldn't help but put on a small smile as he saw hers. Smiles were contagious it seemed as well as laughter. It wasn't big enough for Sakura to notice hugely, but it wasn't small enough to let her not notice.

Watching the time tick past on a clock opposite of Sakura, he realised that they still needed to pack and leave as soon as they could. The horse he had asked for would be dropped off soon and they had to leave immediately. Deciding to end that subject, he told that it was no problem in a warm tone then brushing it off easily, slightly reminding her of how all guys tend to do that, probably to make themselves look cooler. Whether or not it actually worked was another thing, but it had that effect on her. A sad thought popped up in her head though, reminding her of her old life. It reminded her of her old friends of whom she was now separated from, either by terms of the walls of this house, or by terms of the wall between her and the afterlife.

Her eyes heavy with lingering pain, she was snapped out of her reverie when Itachi chucked a silk kimono at her. He didn't stop either at that either. Glaring at him for what could have been the fifth time in the past 5 minutes, he opened her drawers nonchalantly and threw balls of socks at her. She caught each and every one of them, but panicked when she didn't have any room in her arms to catch anymore without dropping the whole load. He smirked at her dilemma before chucking a backpack onto a space on the bed beside her. With a teasing voice he smirked arrogantly as he spoke.

"Ne, didn't I tell you to start packing? Or do I have to go through all of your underwear?" His smirk was malicious as she blushed cherry red, chuckling as he dodged the dangerous sock balls that Sakura threw at him with as much force as she could. It didn't embed itself into the wall like she wanted to, but one hit him on the forehead and she was sure that she had thrown it hard enough to give him at least a tiny bruise. Throwing them nonstop until he was almost out of the room, he poked his head out from the corner of the door and peeped in childishly, teasing her once more.

"If you change your mind I'll be next door." He loved teasing his wife. She was so funny in her reactions, especially how her expression changed from embarrassment to anger in less than a second. Ducking back behind the door and behind the wall, he barely escaped the fate of having an extremely heavy pillow attacking his face. Looking slightly sympathetic to his favourite pillow in the house, he closed the door quickly before reaching out to grab it, hugging it slightly and walking to Sakura's slightly broken room.

His smile slightly wavering, he lay on her cut up bed with his cheek on her pillow which apparently survived her violent rampage, his own one held in his arms as he thought to himself quietly. He knew that she had been hesitating, he could tell immediately whenever she was thinking of anything other than the slightly happy play that he always put on for her. She was drifting, and he needed to make sure that he stopped her before it was too late, like he had done so just now. Being with him wasn't supposed to be a happy family type thing, but at least it would distract her, at least for a little bit. Even if it was at the expense of his dignity and humility, he supposed it was worth it when he saw her small smile afterwards. It wasn't everyday that she smiled for him, in fact, it was an extremely rare occurrence within itself whenever Itachi made _anyone_ smile.

But when Sakura opened the door suddenly and burst in, he couldn't deny his heart practically jumping out of his chest and giving him the fright of his life. His face now red as a tomato, Sakura took one look at him and burst out laughing. Slightly annoyed at the unfairness of her bullying, he totally decided to ignore his blatant hypocrisy.

"Eh? What's this? You really_** do**_ want me to pack your underwear for you? Sure." He said abnormally cheerfully, totally happy and triumphant over his immature victory. She just looked at him blankly as if she was looking at an immature child, which at the moment she and he both knew that he was acting like one. But she pushed that aside and decided to talk about the actual reason she had confronted him.

"Itachi, why did you throw me this kimono?" She asked, holding up a beautifully designed flower embroidered Kimono, with an Uchiha clan symbol at the back of the collar. He looked at her blankly before speaking, probably imagining what she would look like in it. Sighing, he sat onto the bed and looked at her eye to eye.

"It was my mothers, so you can have it now." He said sombrely, his eyes turning away from her before changing his mind and watching her reaction carefully. She wanted to say something, but once again, she couldn't. She hadn't realised why until now, but there was a nagging, tugging feeling pulsing through her stomach. Maybe it was because she was scared that he would get angry at her, hurt her, punish her for the words that she wanted to say. But something pulled her further to somehow believe that if she said the words she wanted to say, maybe she would break him. That somehow, if she spoke, the confident man in front of her would break apart, just like the world had. She asked herself why she should even care if she hurt him, and she answered that it was because for some reason, she felt like he didn't deserve it. Somehow, she didn't want to hurt her husband, even though she had hurt all of the people around her.

His eyes were filled with grief and suppressed pain. She could tell instantly that his mother had been extremely important to him, as anyone else's mother would and should be. But yet again, she wanted to ask why he had killed her back then if he really had cared so much about her. The way that he stared at the fabric with obvious discomfort, for once it was actually easy for her to understand what he was thinking and feeling. The sight of his agonizing discomfort made her skin feel cold, her breath non-existent and everything felt strained. Maybe it was because he always seemed so strong to her, so unapproachable, so stoic and indifferent to the world around him that seeing him now in a slightly defenceless state made her feel worry and slight fear inside of her. She didn't know why seeing him like that affected her so much, but all she knew was that she didn't like it.

Thankfully, he didn't stay like that for the entire time. Quickly recovering from the painful memories, he stood up from the bed and walked towards her, stopping at arm's length in front of her. She looked up puzzledly at him, wondering what he would do now. Nothing happened for a while though, he just stared at her. After a while, he spoke.

"You can wear that at the party." He said.

"A-Are you sure?" She asked sincerely, making him smile softly at her caring nature. He nodded and put his hand in his pocket, fumbling around for something. When he finally found what he wanted in that pocket, he brought out a small piece of paper that had a couple of seals on it. Watching him, she noticed subtly how his biceps would slowly delve and dip as he brought it up in line with his eye. Blushing she forced herself to continue observing what he was doing. Guessing that he was probably checking if the seals on the parchment were correct or undamaged, he then focused chakra into it and it transformed into a slightly bigger scroll.

On the scroll were many seals, with many circles and arrows pointing to the centre. Moving slightly backwards as Itachi walked past her back to the bed, he laid it out neatly and unrolled it until he saw a certain section of seals. When he was content with his discovery, he smirked as he made a couple of fast seals, placing his hand in the circle straight after. A small puff of smoke arose from his hand, and he walked backwards from it, carrying something shiny.

Sakura stared dumbfounded as Itachi pretty much pulled out a silk artisan Obi from the scroll, as well as various bits of beautiful jewellery. He gathered them all in his arms and then turned to Sakura, inclining his head towards the items as if he were offering them to her; which of course he was. She walked towards him too, and carefully collected the pile of fabric from his arms, being careful that the jewels didn't fall off from on top of the folded Obi. She looked at them for a while before looking at him again. They were absolutely beautiful, and she immediately knew that they were probably extremely expensive. In fact, it would have probably taken double of her current savings to even buy one of the diamond earrings that lay on top of the Obi. He was still smiling at her softly, slightly happy that she liked them. They were also his mother's of course, he had kept them in an item summoning scroll for a while now, as well as other things. He had no use for them, and he could see no better owner for them than his own wife. Plus, watching his wife left speechless for a change was pretty amusing.

The packing took only a few more moments, Sakura and Itachi having a small dispute over how Sakura had just stuffed the clothes into the bag, making Itachi having to end up folding her clothes for her. Inwardly, she smirked in her victory, folding clothes was one of the things she absolutely hated, though there were a lot of parts of housework that she hated.

After a while, the packing was all done, and Itachi carried his bag as Sakura carried her own out into the front garden. Just as planned, the horse was waiting there patiently. Looking around, she couldn't spot another one, and her eyebrows furrowed when she realised his intentions. So she turned to him and shook her head, uttering a simple refusing, "No way." Itachi just looked at her and smirked demonically, the corner of his mouth pretty much reaching his ears.

"I can take you by force if you want to, I could even tie you up and let the horse drag you across the floor if you hate sitting next to me so much." She gaped at him when he playfully threatened her, whining that that was unfair bullying. He just countered that she was the one who brought it up, and that he should be the one to complain since every few seconds of the way she'd probably nag or whine. Unable to come up with anything to retaliate, she just huffed and looked away, as if totally ignoring him. The plan was genius apart from the fact he then pulled her by the back of her collar and pretty much dragged her towards the horse. Ignoring her shrieks and stumbling as she tried to walk backwards, he gave a couple of words of thanks to the boy who came to deliver the horse before grabbing Sakura and lifting her onto the horse. He told her to hold her backpack in front of her whilst he put his own on his back. Getting on top of the horse, Sakura cursed him as the space between them was pretty much nonexistent, she could even feel the warm breath on her neck though it could have just been Itachi teasing her again.

The journey there was long and slow, it took a total of 3 days because they had to keep stopping at inns since the horse needed to rest, as well as Sakura complaining that she couldn't stand sitting down on a horse (pressed up against him) for more than 6 hours at a time. Itachi didn't really mind being in close contact with her, he had nothing to be ashamed of. But he had to admit he also couldn't stand sitting on a horse riding hour after hour for a long period of time. He yearned to stretch his legs, and at some points it was pretty tempting to ditch the horse and unseal Sakura's chakra to make things go at least a bit faster.

So after countless cycles of them riding their horse for a few hours, staying at an inn for a few hours and walking around town centres, riding their horse for a few more hours, staying at an inn and sleeping (Sakura had no choice but to share a room with Itachi, their aura screamed newlywed) and repeating the cycle over and over again to the next day, they had finally reached their destination.

Although, it wasn't exactly sunshine happy land when they crossed the border into a realm where the sun practically didn't exist. Itachi had forgotten to warn Sakura that it _actually rained_ in the hidden village of _rain_, and so she didn't prepare in advance a raincoat. And it seems that the reason that Itachi had forgotten to tell her, was because he forgot to prepare one for himself too. After all the things that had been going through both of their minds, they easily admitted that they had been distracted and/or preoccupied with thinking of other, more important things than to pack a raincoat to stop themselves being soaked to the bone.

It wasn't easy travelling on an equally wet animal pressed up against another equally as wet guy behind you, the horse kept shaking its head and body to get rid of excess water, spraying lovely horse hair water onto Sakura's face. And then whenever she would sneeze Itachi would scold her and demand to know if she had a cold or not. After she reminded him sixteen times that she was a medic nin and was a damn good one for a reason, he finally stopped bugging her. But that still left the problem of the horse. Thankfully, kindly gentlemanly chivalrous act or not, Itachi offered to switch places with her, but she would have to hold him tightly so that she wouldn't fall off, and also carry his bag too since he wouldn't be able to direct the horse properly with only one arm. Of course, she accepted, and was then content with the lack of horse spray on her body.

When they got to the village at around seven pm, they were greeted by a young looking woman with blue hair. Itachi had whispered to her that her name was Konan, the leader's wife, and also an Takatsuki member. Sakura took this as a warning not to mess with her or annoy her in anyway, since whenever Itachi felt the need to state who someone was, that person probably had a lot of status or power.

Itachi got off of the horse first, and offered his arms for Sakura to jump into. She wanted to raise an eyebrow at his actions, but quickly remembered that they were to act lovey dovey. Remembering now that the main people they had to act in front of was his leader and his wife, she put on a realistic smile and hopped slightly towards him, letting him pick her up a bit before setting her down onto the floor and offering to carry the bags for her.

Konan addressed Itachi, and said something about showing them to their room. Sakura sighed inwardly, she would never be getting away from him during this… field trip. When Konan turned her head towards her, she looked in slight confusion at her. Sakura looked blankly back, until she got a 'show your respect to her' look from her beloved husband. Immediately bowing ninety degrees, she didn't rise until the blue haired woman told her too. She then introduced herself.

"My name is Konan. You don't have to bow to me, wife of Itachi. Your husband has done as much work as I have towards this future." She said smiling vibrantly, her eyes warm and kind, her voice like honey. Sakura thanked her, finding herself smiling back at this person's warm personality. It had been so long, _too long_ since she had been with her friends or even been in the presence of such an equally warm person as _him_. This thought made her sadden yet again, to think, that this seemingly kind woman was one of the people who _murdered_ one of her most important friends. Her eyes once again clouded with memories and increasing hatred for the people around her, her train of thought was broken once again when she asked her a question.

"And may I be honoured with the privilege of knowing your name?" She smiled, "Or do I have to keep calling you wife of Itachi." Sakura didn't know why, but the sound of 'wife of Itachi' made her laugh a bubbly one, her laughter echoing with the rain and ringing like a soothing bell in said person's ears. Konan smiled, sure that this girl was a sensible person and not like the others that had joined in with the party. She would be a good option to hang out with and talk to during the long hours of meeting that the men will have to have later on.

"My name is Sakura." She said simply, she didn't want to give any more details in case it was a bad thing to do so, she didn't know whether her known loyalty to her village would jeopardise anything or not. Little did she know, that Konan couldn't and wouldn't care less about her past, having been through many things herself, the present was what was now.

"Oh, were you the apprentice of the Godaime of Konoha? I've heard many things about you." She said, trying to spike up a conversation, instead sending chills across Sakura's spine. Sakura glanced over at Itachi first, who gave her a look that told her that it didn't matter what she said, as long as she didn't say the real reasons why she married him. Konan noticed this, but brushed it off as Sakura just being very reliant on Itachi as a type of support. Reassured, Sakura looked back at Konan and nodded politely, telling her that Tsunade was her past teacher before she passed away. Konan's smile immediately disappeared, and her eyes looked anxious.

"I'm very sorry to hear that Sakura-san. I know it must have been very painful to lose your teacher." She said, signs of her aging showing now more than when she had smiled. Sakura could then tell she must have been around 40 years old, and to be honest she was amazed she could look so young. She probably looked younger because she smiled so warmly, that was probably the reason Sakura thought. What shocked her more though, was her sincere empathy for her situation. This woman in front of her, knew how painful it was, and to be honest had probably experienced more of it than she had. Even more so, she was slightly surprised that this woman, who had tried to kill all of her friends, her family, her teammates and her village was sincerely empathising with her. This made her stomach churn in disgust. She didn't want to believe that her enemies were human, like Itachi, she wanted to believe that they were monsters. She knew that they weren't, and she understood that extremely well, _too_ well. At that moment that she had realised this, she felt like she wanted to curl up into a little ball, away from the world.

But really, the bare thought of even thinking that these people were human with feelings of their own was terrifying. It was terrifying that, to their point of view she would have probably been the person in the wrong when they had to fight against each other, and that to them, she would have been the definition of pure evil as she tried her best to kill them and destroy their hopes and dreams. Tsunade had told her about the views of the enemy, that they were fighting for what they believed was right, but Sakura had never paid attention. It chilled her to the bone now that she was able to understand this, even if she didn't want to, the ghosts of those of whom she had killed suddenly haunted her as she realised her hypocrisy in the reason that she had fought for. Her eyes sad, but not tearful, she now understood at least a bit better that these people were not born monsters at birth. Looking down, she guessed that understanding this and that was what you called growing up and maturing, she had forgotten that the world wasn't in black and white since the war started.

With a few quiet words of thanks directed at Konan, Itachi interrupted their 'chat' and asked if she could show them to their room, adding that Sakura was probably very tired from the rough journey. Once again Konan looked at her sympathetically, as if she knew exactly how painful travelling to their hidden village was, especially for one who hadn't seen rain for the past ages.

After some walking, which Sakura couldn't decide was either good or bad since it was true that she before couldn't wait until she got off of that horse, but it was also true her legs were now aching like hell, they finally arrived in a large mansion. It looked rich, with plenty of beautiful koi ponds and lotus flower decorations ornamenting their front garden. Thinking to herself, they must have really went all out with the celebrations as she saw plenty of Chinese lanterns illuminating the semi-dark setting, somehow she couldn't wait to see the decorations inside the mansion. Her eyes sparkling with excitement, she realised she hadn't been to a celebration of anything for such a long time. Caught up in her own excitement, she began to half skip happily towards the garden, pulling a half amused half bored Itachi along with her. Konan was delighted that her new acquaintance liked the decoration and the design of her garden. Itachi just smiled knowingly as she acted like an excited child in a theme park.

His alarm bells started ringing though as soon as she halted abruptedly, and he could feel the fear radiate from her trembling body. Slowly and subtly, she inched closer towards him, clinging onto his shirt and practically hiding behind his back. Confused as to what could have scared her so greatly, and why he felt an urge to defend her too, he used his common sense and looked in the direction of where she was looking at. When he did, the reason came pretty clear as he saw a familiar trouble making blonde man smirk maliciously at her as if she were prey, and also when he felt a huge amount of murderous intent directed at her. Sighing, he guessed at least he knew why he felt he had to protect her from something now, although he'd probably have to guard her 24/7 whilst they were here, Deidara was always a troubling one.

He was thinking about going up to him to tell him to stop creeping his wife out and to not even think of hurting her, but he was stopped when two familiar petite arms wrapped around his waist from behind him and felt his wife shaking slightly, hugging him from behind for support. Konan watched this, but decided to let them have their own special moment together, believing this event to be something completely different to reality. His hands instinctively going to her arms, he stopped the reflex midway so he didn't grip her arms too tightly. His hands moved to her own, squeezing them slightly as if to comfort her, and it resulted in her asking him desperately to give her her chakra back. Letting her speak and not denying her straight away, he guessed that this must be a pretty serious issue if she was this frightened. And if giving her chakra back would make her feel safer, it became more and more tempting to give her that privilege to her. So when she felt him not say anything nor move at all in disagreement, she hugged him harder and gulped before finally whispering what the problem was to Itachi, making sure it was quiet enough for no one else to hear but him.

"I… I think I killed his partner." She said, as if that would make everything make sense to him. When he said nothing and instead looked behind slightly in confusion, she said, "He wants to kill me," in hope that Itachi would understand that. Now that she had mentioned it, he guessed that he could recall a time when the blonde was more pissed off than usual, having to team up with Tobi who would always pester him instead of his previous and more stoic partner. He also recalled that it _was_ Sakura who killed Sasori, and that she was probably right in her suspicion that Deidara wanted to hurt her, if not kill her. But he still wouldn't let her have her chakra back. It wasn't because he wasn't worried about her safety, it was because if she did end up trying to defend herself and ending up destroying the mansion and/or involving other Akatsuki members, it wouldn't end up pretty. They were each more than just a handful and Itachi hated extra complications to things that he didn't like doing, such as attending this new years party.

He told her silently as well as squeezing her hands reassuringly that he would protect her, and if Deidara even had the intention of hurting her Pein and Konan would stop him at once and punish him rightfully. He also explained about how the other Akatsuki members would also be there and wouldn't put up with her trying to beat them up, and her spirits deflating immediately as she realised she was not going to win this argument. She would have tried harder, but the object of their dilemma was approaching them, making Sakura bury her face in Itachi's back, pressing herself closer to him in a pathetic attempt to hide herself and make herself feel a bit safer. It wasn't as if Itachi was complaining or anything.

He came closer, footsteps tapping gracefully across the marble stone floor as he approached Itachi, Sakura and Konan, who until now had been forgotten about as she had remained silent throughout the past few moments. He stopped in front of Itachi, young and proud, though considerably shorter than him as he had to look up slightly at him, glaring at her husband. It wasn't until then he realised the arms around Itachi's waist, and smirked as he tried to walk around Itachi. With one simple movement, he was told that Sakura was totally 'off limits' to him, as Itachi swiftly and strongly held his arm horizontally, blocking the path to her completely.

"Oi oi, I'm allowed to take a look at the legendary Uchiha's wife aren't I? People were starting to wonder if you were gay or not… Un." He said maliciously, his sarcasm dripping like venom as he spat out his family name. The insults embedded into Sakura's head and made her feel slightly bad for her husband, she too had almost come to the same conclusion, and she had also hated him with as much passion as this young blonde. Realising that, she hadn't even realised she had stopped hating him, and actually started to wonder what had changed between them. It could have been the fact she had discovered that he wasn't evil at all, and that he actually had some sincerity and kindness in his heart, but she still couldn't brag about it.

The pressure around his waist slowly decreased until it really was only Itachi's arms holding them there. He turned around slowly, still holding onto her arm, and looked at her sombrely, as if her were a child had lost his mother. The sight almost breaking her heart, she stepped forward and hugged him, laying her head on his chest as if her contact would make him feel at least a tiny bit better. Which it did much more than. His sad expression immediately turning happy again, she guessed she had found what made her not hate him anymore, and if she would admit anything, the reason why she liked him just the tiniest bit. Because deep down, this grown man was a lost child, and to him, she could be the only thing that could help him. She knew she was thinking silly things, and that she was most likely way over her head, but that was the feeling that he gave off with her. She didn't know why but, since Ino drilled those crazy ideas into her head, they wouldn't leave her alone. She knew that she was acting like a immature teenager who somehow ended up believing that everyone was in love with her, but that was the vibe that Itachi was giving her, and part of her wanted to believe it for some reason. She didn't know why, because she didn't love him, and her realistic and more sane part of her knew that he _didn't_ love her, but she couldn't help herself from thinking it.

And when this asshole came up to him and started _bullying_ and _aggravating_ him, she couldn't deny the feeling that she wanted to defend him and punch the blonde guy sky high. But it seemed like she didn't have to, since Itachi seemed quite used to his behaviour and had plenty of ways to come back.

"Really? You seem so disappointed, but I'm sorry, I'm not like you and nor am I interested in you." He said, not taking an eye off of Sakura as he spoke smoothly and crisply, playing absent mindedly with a loose lock of hair that Sakura had. The glare that Deidara sent to him was deadly, and if looks could kill then Itachi may have found himself with a problem. Thankfully that wasn't a problem, but apparently there still was one since Itachi brought both of his hands up to her and blocked her ears.

"Heh, you think you're so fucking great don't you? Un. Just you wait, I'll fucking blow your wife up after I fucking ra-" He said, but his words were cut off by an angry voice.

"Deidara. I _dare_ you to continue that sentence, let alone do it." The voice was deep, even deeper than Itachi's, and by now Itachi had already unblocked her ears since he had forgotten that she could lip read. She was now surrounded by huge, scary, S rank missing nin of whom two of which she hadn't been acquainted to yet. Konan had come and joined in with scolding Deidara as Sakura was now trembling even more from fear, now clinging onto Itachi as if for dear life. Itachi however, seemed as angry as the man who came out of the shadows just a few seconds ago, his sharingan revolving around his pupil as he easily reflected the severity of the current hostility.

As the man emerged from the shadows, she recognised him to be the leader of Akatsuki, Pein. She didn't know whether or not she would be in his good books or not, or if she could even trust Itachi when he said that Pein was a respectful and fair person. But she had to admit, when he kicked Deidara across the garden when the blonde made another sarcastic comment, he did get a few extra points in her own good book.

Realising that Pein was now looking at her, she moved her hands away from Itachi and bowed in respect, apologising for the trouble that they had caused. Like his wife, Pein smiled at her sincerity, and told Itachi that he had chosen a good wife. She blushed, even though they weren't exactly happily married, but then Pein started to talk to her.

"It is ok Sakura-san. You do not have to bow to me. Your manners and respect have been clearly well established and I highly appreciate your sincerity." He said respectfully, and she smiled as she thanked him for his kind words. So Itachi wasn't lying after all, she guessed she should have trusted him at least a little more as she felt the tiniest bit more guilty. This time, it was Konan's turn to speak though.

"Are you okay Sakura? I'm sorry Pein and I didn't intervene earlier, we didn't expect that type of hostility. Rest assured we won't let anyone harm you, you're safe with us." She reassured, and part of her relaxed and felt much safer with just the sight of her warm smile. But then the fear came again as she heard mumbling from way behind her, watching Deidara arise from the rubble. Watching him rub his head, once again she hid behind Itachi's back, who had gotten used to her relying on him to hide behind by now. He didn't mind, he would rather her _not_ be near Deidara if he could help it.

Deidara stopped to the side of him though, and Itachi was ready for a fight. He looked at her blankly before laughing through his nose, making Sakura slightly pissed off. Before she could react though, he was already walking into inside of the building, mumbling something like, "Fine. I get it, I won't touch her… Jeez… What's with Uchiha's and their wives… Un…"

A sigh a relief was let out before she could help it, and Itachi turned around, his hand turning into a fist and bonking her lightly on the head, giving her a look that asked her why was she acting so weak and fearful. All she did was glare back, with a look that told him that if he didn't want her to look weak and helpless then maybe he should give her her chakra back. He was going to glare back and give her a look that said no, but Konan interrupted their glaring competition and told them that she would lead them to their room first, Pein had already started making his way inside.

Konan led them the same way that Deidara had went, but thankfully they ended up somewhere where he wasn't. Instead, they were led to a part of the mansion where the rooms were. And to be honest, the rooms were huge. They were more like suites, with a living room, a traditional Japanese type porch and it even had a mini hot springs bath. Totally forgetting the recent scenes and problems that she had, she shouted happily to Itachi that she would get dibs on going into the mini hot springs bath. He replied with a silent glare which was missed completely by his wife. Konan giggled softly at their' comfortable' behaviour with each other and told them that the celebrations would start in about an hour. After thanking her, she left the 'room' quietly and they were alone. Before Itachi could react, Sakura burst out cheering.

"Woooooooohooooooooooo! Hot springs time!" She shouted out with glee, in the process of yanking her top off _in front of him_ as she ran towards it. Holding back a blush, he immediately appeared in front of her and held her wrists, pulling the hands that was currently halfway up her torso down so her exposed skin was no longer... exposed.

"What the hell Itachi!" She yelled, trying to pry her hands free from his grasp, but he didn't budge. He stayed silent as he tried to gather the courage to tell her not to strip in front of him. Failing at that attempt, he sighed and guessed the easiest way was to try a different approach.

Grabbing her waist and her ass he hoisted her over his shoulder and carried her to the bedroom where their stuff was. She was screaming of course, _really loudly_ in his ear, so before he went mad he had to put her down. Chucking her to the bed and earning a painful hiss from Sakura, he told her to get dressed for the celebration.

"Why? It'll only take me like, 5 minutes." She replied, wanting to go back to the hot springs. He looked at her as if she was crazy and asked her if she had ever even put on a kimono before.

"Uh… No? But it can't be that hard right?" She said simply, expecting victory and access to the mini hot springs. Itachi just stared at her, unable to stop the blush that was appearing on his face. Sighing hard again, he rubbed his face with his hands and went to Sakura's backpack, pulling out his mother's kimono from another summoning scroll that he put it in and gave to Sakura so it would be lighter. Unfolding the folds of the kimono he held them out in his arms and told Sakura to take her clothes off, bar her undergarments. Sakura blushed in outrage, demanding to know why. She could put the damn thing on herself, it couldn't be that hard.

"You haven't even _worn_ one before. It usually takes at least half an hour to even get this thing on let alone finish wrapping the obi around you." He countered.

"Pffft, I bet I could do it in 5 minutes. Here, give it to me." She challenged, and Itachi raised an eyebrow at her confidence. Amused, he let her have the five minutes to try to wear it, but in return if she failed she'd have to willingly let him put it on her for her.

Five minutes passed, and the kimono on her wilted like her confidence did, and before she knew it Itachi was already untying the amateurish ties that she made. Glaring at the duvet on the bed, she turned around back to Itachi and trying not to pay attention to what he was doing, and that was _dressing her_ like a _baby_.

Pulling her failed attempts of equipping the kimono away from her body, he was left with a beautiful view of her body. She had curves in all the right places and unlike him, her skin was flawless with no scars or imperfections. Shaking his head, he told himself he wasn't supposed to be admiring her body, and that he was supposed to be putting this damn kimono onto her.

Grabbing the part of the kimono which was supposed to act as her undergarments on top of her already existing ones, he told her to put that on. It was simple enough for her to put on so he could let her do that on her own. He wanted to avoid any actual contact with her as much as he could, whenever skin touched skin he felt as if he was on fire, and there wasn't much he could do to control his urges. Reaching out for the second layer, this time made of silk, he told her to hold her arms out and to put them in the arm holes. Doing as he said so, he started to fold the sides of the openings inside and then from nowhere wrapped a silk band of ribbon around her waist. They didn't speak not once to each other, apart from the rare occasion of Itachi asking her if it was too tight or not. All she would do was shake her head and continue to try to concentrate on something else. They didn't talk about how pretty the kimono was, they didn't talk about what type of celebrations there would be, they didn't talk about why Sakura had clung onto him earlier. They stayed in perfect silence, whether or not in tacit understanding we may never know. Whenever he moved in towards her to tie something or fold something, she could feel his warm breath flutter against her neck, as well as his body heat emitting from his hands, his arms, his chest, his everything. Her heartbeat thumping hard and erratically, she prayed that he wouldn't notice that and the mild red hints that were stained onto her cheeks.

The time passed slowly, and as Itachi said, it took almost the full hour. He left wordlessly to another room after withdrawing another item summoning scroll from his own backpack, giving Sakura time to have some alone time. To be honest, she had nothing to think about, she was totally and utterly speechless and she didn't even know why. Her mind blank, she reminded herself that they had to go to some celebration thin again, and dove into her bag and took out various bits of the jewellery that Itachi had given her. Walking in front of a mirror, she carefully put them in, and beamed happily as they sparkled and twinkled.

Her smile froze down to a curious expression though as she saw from the reflection Itachi come out of the door, outfitted in a male kimono. She had to admit, he looked pretty hot in it, but wondered why he was wearing a kimono instead of just a normal suit. When she looked at herself in the mirror as he came closer, she realised it was probably to make her feel not out of place.

He was wearing a more masculine type of kimono, she didn't know whether or not it was his own or his father's or something, but it was more likely his own this time. It had a small Uchiha emblem sewn into the collar, like her own, and instead of flowers embroidered into the material, his had just plain dark material. It was nothing too showy and it was simple, just how he liked it.

Looking at him, she blushed slightly as she realised just how handsome her husband was, his face having no imperfections apart from a couple of lines probably caused by baby fat; and even those weren't that bad. His hair was tied in a loose ponytail, long and lazy like he was at times, something that only people as close as Sakura was to him would know.

But for some reason, he looked pretty shocked for someone like himself. In fact, he had the exact same expression that Sakura had, a mix of slight surprise with mild confusion, and a hint of admiration.

Looking at her, she was breathtaking, and she probably didn't even know that she had that type of effect on him. She tied her hair up in a lazy bun, with hair threatening to fall out but he knew wouldn't, and bangs that framed her face beautifully. And an inch left and he realised she was wearing his mothers jewellery. Smiling now, he was glad she truly liked his presents and that his mother's past possessions were able to be used well. He really did respect and adore his mother, despite how it had turned out in the end. His eyes dark, he himself was brought to a realm of memories as he recalled that night, before being tugged back into reality when Sakura poked him hard in the chest.

"Hey." She said almost cutely, pouting slightly at the lack of attention probably. He brought a smile back on which temporarily caused her to stumble in her words, but she quickly recovered, "Aren't we supposed to be going to dinner?" She asked. Itachi just stared at her and shrugged, "I guess so."

"Then let's go." She said, pulling him by the sleeve to the exit of their suite, before Itachi suddenly pulled anchor and made her halt. Sakura just looked at him in confusion.

"Your shoes." He said simply, smirking as he looked down. Sakura looked down also and saw nothing, blushed before she let go of his sleeve and ran to back to the room where Itachi had probably left her shoes.

When she came back breathless, having ran there with a kimono on was a huge challenge, considering how many bloody ties were around her waist, she glared at him and murmured under her breath, "Asshole."

"Hmm? Did you say something? _Sakura_?" He teased, whispering it back to her and blowing hot air against her neck, something he knew made her uncomfortable around him. With no come back, they both knew that she had lost this round.

"Sh-Shut up." She said whilst blushing, unconsciously giving him the victory he wanted and craved. Putting an arm around her waist, he brought her close to him as they exited the suite.

* * *

Hope you enjoyed this chapter XD I rushed the ending part. Originally, I was going to make this chapter huge, but I got obred and split it in half XD So chapter 6 will be... the rest of chapter 5 XD

Review people :) It takes about a click and 5 seconds, plus some typing to show me you love me XD

Oh and I know I majorly fucked up the ItaSaku in here. I tried to make them HAPPEN but it was hard since I can't make it too obvious that Itachi has feelings for a certain someone. Also, there are soooo many clues I gave up trying to explain in the story that show he cares XD Eg, way that Itachi keeps letting her have time to herself because he knows shes upset, and the small tiny things that he does for her. Try spotting them XD I dare you.

Oh and, REVIEW! I'll update faster that way ''


	6. Chapter 6

Okay, before you read this chapter, few things I want to say.

1. Merry belated xmas XD

2. I had exams so this chapter was late coming.

3. I had difficulty writing the end part of this chapter and it felt laborious, so the quality dropped xD And also whilst writing it I got a little hyper and you can see the peaks and chasms of my writing :o

4. I hope you like the chapter ;-; One day I shall reedit the chapter to make it flow better xD **Review** people btw ;~; Hardly anyone reviewed last time so I didn't know if it was an okay chapter or not :X Thank you to everyone who did review though 3 You guys make me feel thisssss much more confident about my writing style XD (Which is weird I guess, I write differently from other people apparantly :X)

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Returning Favours

Chapter 6

Brothers

Written by eifi

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Itachi failed to understand how someone so small could get so drunk so fast. It just didn't make any sense. One cup. One, small cup of sake was all it took to reduce his wife into a bumbling drunk crazy person with the coordination abilities of a spider on caffeine. Glaring angrily at Kisame, who had thought it would be a great idea to bring a huge crate of sake for everyone to share, he glared even more at the fact she hadn't _warned_ him about her amazingly low tolerance for alcoholic substances. She was a bloody medic nin for goodness sake, couldn't she just burn it off with chakra? Oh wait, mentally slapping himself, he was the one who had thought it to be a wonderful idea to _seal _her chakra, so he couldn't even blame her for this. Wasn't her master a renowned lover of sake though? He would have thought that at least some of the tolerance for alcohol would have passed down to her student, but _no_, here she was, laughing her head off at every single bloody joke that someone made.

That wasn't even the worst of it. _Something_ extremely soft and _warm_ was rubbing the inside of his thigh, and he didn't even want to look to see what the hell it was or even to whom it even belonged to. Whatever it was, he just kept _glaring_ at her, who throughout all this was completely oblivious to her annoyed husband. No one else seemed to notice this though, and instead they were being entertained by Sakura's more or less drunken state.

In between 'waves' as Itachi had decided to call it, she would blurt out some random incoherent thing, some of them complete nonsense; and some not complete nonsense. As much as Itachi wanted to cover her mouth and make sure that she didn't speak anymore, the rest of them didn't seem to have a problem with her drunken state and they would have thought it rude of him to pull her out of the party. As if it wasn't rude enough to start screaming out of nowhere anyway.

Wanting to bury his head under a pillow or something, he concluded that there wasn't much hope at all for him, and that if he would just calm down and push out all other thoughts of Sakura that weren't to do with getting the hell out of this place, then maybe he might have a chance to escape mentally unscathed. It was then that Itachi realised that it was most likely Sakura's leg that was rubbing against his thigh, as when she tried to get up, most likely to _stand on the table_, Itachi grasped both her waist and whatever was touching him, and received an annoyed look from her. Case closed. There was no way in _hell_ that he was going to let Sakura jump up onto the table and do whatever she likes, this creature was _dangerous_. Her annoyed state didn't last for long, she burst into more cheerful laughter straight after and put her hands in Itachi's hair.

"Heehee, it's actually really soft isn't it?" She giggled sweetly, apparently not intending to take her hands off of him anytime soon. Though, this statement _did_ manage to earn a deep red scarlet blush from her husband, who apparently had no comeback or reply to her amazing discovery. Totally speechless, his mind went into a total blank and shut down completely. Not expecting that. Was totally _not expecting that_. Poking him a little when he didn't move for a few seconds, she found out that his frozen and unreactive state reminded her of one of her cuter teddy bears of which she hadn't seen for such a long time that she had forgotten completely what they had looked like.

"Huuuuuuug!" She shouted happily, pressing his face into her chest and not letting him go with a vice grip. Itachi didn't know whether or not to be thankful to his old partner though, as he watched as they all managed to discretely turn their attention away and direct it all at Kisame who proceeded into singing an old enka themed song. At the cost of his eardrums dying, he guessed it was worth it to avoid the embarrassment of being sexually harassed by his drunken wife.

Glaring once more at his wife, he _dared_ her to carry on, a semi-murderous aura being emitted from his body. She either didn't notice his silent threats, or she just didn't care. Turning around to the table and to her plate, she stabbed a small piece of fatty pork with her two chopsticks, and held it out to her husband cheerfully.

"Say ahhhh." She chimed happily, holding the piece of pork in front of his mouth as he glared annoyedly at her. Of all the times she could have gotten drunk, it had to be the night that he had to show her off in front of his superiors. She could have drunk all of the liquor and wine and beer she wanted to a week ago, and he wouldn't have complained at all. Well, he took that back after admitting he would have bitched at her at some point about drinking too much. But that wasn't the point! The point was that she was drunk _**now**_, in front of _**everyone**_, and she obviously damn well intended to carry on too. Chomping on the pork that she offered to him, she giggled happily to herself when he took her bait, looking as if she had just won an award or something.

The night carried on slowly, his patience deteriorating slowly as she progressed to discover that Itachi didn't like it when she poked him repeatedly, and in turn started poking him over and over again. It took sheer determination and will power not to grab her hands and pin them down somewhere, as the poking was getting more annoying as the seconds ticked away. After a while, he declared he had had enough of it, picked Sakura up and swung her over his shoulder and bowed respectfully to his former team members, respectfully asking to retreat back to their room. Understanding the dilemma that Itachi had, Pein and Konan both allowed them to leave the dining hall, and Itachi had thanked them gratefully.

Itachi didn't think he could have ever been more grateful to anyone in his life when they let him go, and he was definitely going to scold Sakura when she returned to being sober again. Walking briskly to their room, he groaned as his lovely, sweet and charming wife decided to tug on his ponytail, shout and order, "Yip yip," and then moan at him for walking too fast. If it not for his sane side and the little voice in his head warning him that if he did do what he was thinking of doing then Sakura would probably barf all over him. He had been barfed on before when he was around 6 years old, and it wasn't a nice experience.

Shrugging, he tried to walk as gracefully and smoothly as he could while trying to get to their room as fast as he could so that he could put this barfing monster down and lock her in the bathroom. When he arrived, since both hands were occupied with holding Sakura and pushing her tangly arms away from him, he simply leaned on the door handle and used his body weight to open the door. Now in the room, he carried on with his pilgrimage to the bathroom, and shoved Sakura inside of it, locking the door behind it and throwing the keys away somewhere around the bed. Tired and exhausted from that ordeal, he rested his back on the bathroom door and slumped, sliding down to the tatami floor and closing his eyes for some shuteye.

But he wasn't allowed even that.

His eyes opening with alarm and surprise as he was violently pulled out of his half asleep drifting mode, he covered his ears and ran raggedly away from the door as his beloved wife started screaming. Fuck, this woman could scream loudly, was all that he could think of as her shrieks pierced through his hands through his eardrums and into his skull.

Realizing 10 seconds later that the others would probably be able to hear her, and would probably think that he was raping her or something, he looked around for the keys. Funnily enough, he couldn't find them. Activating his sharingan, now desperate to make his wife shut the hell up, he scanned the room for the keys. Finally finding them, he swore that if she didn't shut up when he opened that door somebody was going to get their mouth gagged.

Staggering to the door, he struggled to even place the key properly into the keyhole as her voice was too loud, he wondered suddenly how the hell she managed to keep breathing. Dismissing the idea, he opened the door and was immediately rugby tackled by said person.

"Itachiii!" She sang cheerfully, as happy as a squirrel that just got given tons of nuts, as she hugged him tightly on the ground. Itachi, groaned as the world whizzed around him several times, and guessed that he had banged his head in the process of her pushing him to the ground. Lifting his hands to remove her from his torso, he found himself unable to move as she pinned him down first. He didn't know how the hell she could overpower him without chakra, but she did. Maybe it was the alcohol.

So there he was, on the ground, with his hands pinned up above his head on the floor. And there she was, straddling Itachi and looking as demonic as ever in her drunken state, watching with glee as her hubby lay totally defenceless before her.

"Sakura…" He sighed, he was so not in the mood for this and the scenario was such a pain in the neck, "Let me go." She replied with a sad face, pouting away and earning a slightly guilty look on his face. But he shook his head and reminded himself once again, that she was drunk, and that he shouldn't feel any guilt whatsoever when trying to detain her.

"You… You don't like me?" She said with what looked like tears in her eyes. It was almost too easy to make Itachi run into Sakura's pace of thought processing, and it indicated her victory. Seeing the chance as he was totally open, she reached down to him and pressed her lips against hers. Itachi, who was totally still and frozen, couldn't comprehend what the hell was happening until the tip of her tongue brushed against his lips, at which point he gave up and forcefully forgot about anything else that wasn't related to kissing her.

Returning her kiss with as much passion as she unleashed on him, he felt an odd but empowering sense of victory when she moaned deliriously on top of him. Her hands no longer pinning his own down to the floor, they were now tangled in with his hair as she kissed him passionately. He took that chance to flip them over so that he was on top, and continued to kiss her, hands caressing her cheek and her hair. He couldn't explain it, but suddenly, he felt so happy, so happy that he didn't care of the fact that she tasted like sake, and that she was probably only doing this because she was drunk.

Breathlessly, she moaned under him as he kissed her passionately. Itachi knew they both had to breathe, and as much as Itachi didn't mind suffocating in exchange for being able to kiss her, he knew that she probably did mind. Distancing himself from her only by a few centimetres and panting heavily to catch his breath, the whole moment was ruined when she murmured his brother's name.

His eyes widening and all colour draining from his face, he sat up and looked at her as she looked back at him with oblivious eyes. He sat there, in silence as he watched her doze off, blinking a little to help him understand what had just happened, before exhaling the breath that he hadn't even noticed he had held. Hanging his arms and hands limply by his side, he huffed out a cynical laugh before getting up and slumping himself against the wall, _away from her_. Nothing moved, made a sound, nothing. The only thing he could feel at that moment, was his heart thumping against his chest in a painful manner. Nothing could describe the pain that was developing in the depth of his stomach and heart, as well as a deep anger burning inside.

Rolling his head up to look at the ceiling, he stared dismally at it in silence. Managing to make the cracks on the ceiling seem really interesting for a moment or two, he attempted to preoccupy his thoughts with something that was insignificant, an attempt to not think about her. It worked for a few seconds, until he remembered to breathe and all of the pain came throbbing back again.

Glancing over to her sleeping body, he tried breathing harder and faster, as if that would relieve the pain in his chest. The alcohol was taking its toll on him, as was the amount of fatigue his body had been put through whilst trying to travel there. Breathing became laborious, and for a while the pain became white hot, and he collapsed to the floor screaming mutely in pain. Struggling to get up and gasping for air, he found himself coughing out blood into his hands. This shocked him, and immediately used a basic first aid medical ninjutsu to try to locate the source of the bleeding.

After trying to calm the coughing down, he used another type of ninjutsu to attempt to patch up the source of the bleeding, which for some reason was at his lungs. But he was no medical ninja, this would be something that Sakura would be much better than him at. On that note, he looked once again at her, before shaking his head and pushing away any ideas about her checking if anything was wrong. It was probably just a passing thing, though the blood being coughed up did alarm him.

Walking to the bathroom, he washed his hands at the sink before looking at himself in the mirror. The feeling of rage came back slowly, and suddenly the person he thought he could never be angry at was now the person he hated most of all. Looking at the mirror, he felt sick at the fact Sakura had mistaken himself for his brother, and how up till now, that was all she had probably seen. He supposed it was his own leniency and stupidity that led to this, and so there was no one to blame but himself. But suddenly, he felt alone in the world again, as well as tired and exhausted. But most of all, he felt greatly saddened by this fact; feeling alone and finally realising that you were all alone in this world wasn't exactly a lovely feeling, and Itachi knew this feeling better than anyone.

His hands still under the water, he gathered some water in the palms of his hands and brought it to his face, washing it and sobering him up a little before drying his hands and face. Returning to the main bedroom, he looked at her and sighed, guessing that he really shouldn't blame her. Picking her up gently, making sure not to wake her up, he pulled back the duvet so that the bed sheets were bare, and placed her on her side to sleep, just in case she puked or something. Tucking her in gently, he yawned majestically before walking to the direction of the 'living room' section of the suite, where he would retire for the day on a nice, comfy couch.

Laying down on it, he rested his head on the arm rest part of it, using it as a pillow. He wouldn't need a blanket, he knew he wouldn't get much sleep that night anyway. All he needed for now was a comfy place to rest, and some time to think; and he had plenty of that. But before he attempted to relax, he ran another medic ninjutsu through his body to check once again that things were alright with his body. He was also one to double check things, especially things to do with his body, health was a big thing for him.

Seeing things were all fine (to him anyway), he then proceeded with his relaxing night of staring at the ceiling.

* * *

Eyes fluttering open, eyes uncoordinated and dizzy, she awoke with a blinding pain drilling through her forehead. Struggling to move her arms and her legs, she found herself feeling extremely weak she tried to sit up, and when she tried to get out of the bed and stand, she found the whole room whirl around her as she lost her balance and fell on her ass. Wincing with pain, she had half expected Itachi to whirl her back up again, catching her as she fell like he always did. But strangely, he wasn't there. In fact, she couldn't sense his presence at all in the suite and suddenly realised she was _in_ the suite. Not remembering anything that happened last night after she downed her first cup of sake, she wondered exactly how she had ended up safe and sound in the suite again. After how angry Deidara had been with her, she was sure that he would have probably taken the opportunity to kill her, or at least hurt her in some shape, way or form. Thinking as logically as she could with her current state, she could only guess that Itachi looked after her after she got drunk.

Laughing lightly to herself, she supposed she really should have told him of the low alcohol tolerance she has when she is without chakra, but then again, it was _his_ fault for not returning her chakra back to her. She stopped laughing when she was met with a slightly annoyed looking Itachi peering down at her as he stood behind her. Looking at him innocently, she wondered what was wrong. She guessed it must have been something, since Itachi rarely ever showed her that he was pissed off.

"Well you sure look happy." He said sarcastically, the 'slightly annoyed' tone turned more into a 'little less than angry' tone as he knelt down to help her up. Accepting his help to stand up, she asked him what was wrong. He seemed slightly taken back when she asked him that innocently, it was as if she had no idea what she had done to him last night. Staring at her cautiously, he watched her grow uneasy at his intense gaze. This either meant that she was terribly guilty about what she had done, or that she truly and seriously did not know. But knowing her, she was a terrible liar, so it was obvious that the truth was the latter.

"You mean, you can't remember what you did to me last night?" He said in a very suggestive manner, letting her blush beet red and imagine what type of horrendous ordeals she put him through. She already knew that she was a terrible drunk, and that was the main reason that burning off alcohol was one of the first things that her Shishou had taught her. Looking now very apologetic and guilty, she uttered out a humble apology.

"I-I'm _so_ sorry for whatever I did to you last night, I'm a terrible drunk." She apologised, bowing her head slightly as if to emphasise it. Itachi shrugged as if he didn't care much, though it was pretty obvious that he did. Sighing, he walked away and picked up a bag and chucked to her, which she barely managed to catch as she was still extremely disorientated.

"We're leaving." Itachi said bluntly, gathering all of his stuff already and packing his backpack. Sakura stood there for a moment before what he said just registered to her head.

"What? What about the hot springs, the food, the relaxing bit of the trip! It's going to take ages to get back there!" She whined, before Itachi turned around and sent her a deadly glare, sending shivers down her body. He said nothing, but she understood the silent message. 'Shut up and hurry up,' was what she could translate, and so she did. Itachi still scared her, and she didn't want to be scared. She guessed that even after the weeks that she had been spending with him the relationship between them hadn't changed at all, which she was slightly glad for. Even so, he would probably scare anyone with that glare whether or not he had spent _years_ with them. Nevertheless, she turned around to avert his glare and hurried around the room to put her stuff in her backpack. It was easy, since there wasn't much to pack, but she did have to get changed from Itachi's mother's Kimono.

Excusing herself from the room, she walked to the bathroom and locked the door. She wasn't really expecting him to barge in or something, or even peek like some perverts back home would, he had the sharingan for that, but locking it made her feel more safe and secure. His angry self startled her and pretty much rattled her to the bone. Getting changed as fast as she could, she found taking off a kimono was almost as hard as putting it on. A long moment later, she finally had taken it off without breaking anything, and finally got dressed in her travelling clothes. Unlocking the door, she was met with scarlet eyes, and her cheeks immediately blushed to the same colour.

Attempting to punch him, he caught it and raised an eyebrow in suspicion. "What the hell Itachi you fucking pervert!" She shouted, trying weakly to push her fist against his palm in defiance. He looked at her puzzledly before finally getting what she was pissed off at, and chuckled lightly again.

"I'm not the pervert, you are. I had the sharingan before to just check some things were okay around here before I came to check on you," He grinned evilly, "What, you were thinking I was peeking?" Sakura blushed again, and pulled back her fist and went back to the bathroom, stating that she had forgotten to brush her teeth. Accepting this as a good excuse, he walked off to the entrance of the suite, waiting.

Brushing her teeth carefully, she was about to turn the tap on to gargle and wash out her mouth of all the minty fluorine, but a little speck of blood on the table side caught her eye. Continuing to gargle her mouth with water, she wiped and dried her mouth before looking at the red patch intensely. She hadn't had any cuts lately, so it would have probably belonged to Itachi. Eyebrows creasing, her medic side of her started to wonder why his blood was _here_ and not in his body. After a while though, she sighed as she couldn't be bothered to think so hard with a headache, he probably had a nosebleed or something knowing the pervert that he is.

Packing her toothbrush, she hurried and made sure everything was packed in her bags before going to the entrance of the suite where Itachi was waiting.

When she got there, he made a small notion with his hand for her to come closer and to follow, and she did. Walking and walking, it took them around 5 minutes to get out of the huge building that Konan and Pain had constructed. At the exit, they were met by said people.

"You're leaving already?" Konan asked, her attention was now focused on Sakura, "Are you sure that would be wise? After all the alcohol you _did_ drink last night… I'm amazed you can even stand up properly." This was replied with a soft but simple "Eh?" from Sakura, now more curious as to what had happened last night. First Itachi, now Konan.

"Enough Konan, we shouldn't interfere with their plans. They have a huge village to run when they get back." He said, but there was no stern edge to his voice that one would expect with his words. Itachi bowed his head slightly in thanks, and walked around them towards the gate, where two horses stood. Sakura watched him head there, before bowing her head as well and adding a small "Thank you for everything that you have done and provided for us," and rushing off after her husband.

When she finally caught up, he was waiting at the horses. Staring at them, she couldn't help but ask, "Why are there two?" Itachi just shrugged and answered that they wouldn't have to share this time, with a slight hint of sadness that Sakura didn't quite notice. Sakura should have been delighted with this, but for some reason Itachi's distance from her unnerved her to the point she felt really uneasy about what was happening. It was never a good thing when a powerful S rank missing nin was angry, especially if you were possibly the cause of the anger. She didn't know what was wrong with him, but she prayed he would soon sort it out with himself, she didn't like it when he was angry, she didn't like it at all.

The journey home was long and boring; Itachi had held her horses' reins so that her horse didn't stray off since Sakura didn't have a clue about how to ride a horse.

It was halfway through the journey though, that Sakura realised that she didn't recognise the surroundings that they were in, and that they were far from the actual village. They were in the land of fire all right, but surrounded with thick trees that she swore she had never been in before. So, she decided to enquire.

"Where are we?" She asked, and Itachi sighed. He looked back at her half amused, as if he had already known that she was going to ask him that.

"We're taking a detour." He said simply, before continuing with concentrating on steering the horses down the right path. Sakura went back to keeping quiet again, he was still pissed off apparently, and she didn't want to try her luck.

About half an hour more, something that looked like a forest temple or shrine came into her view, and found that the path that they had been taking was probably to get here. Wondering what would be here that would make Itachi want to make a whole day detour, she wanted to ask what it was, but decided against it. She'd probably find out soon enough.

A few minutes more and they finally got there. Getting off of the horse, Itachi approached Sakura's horse, and held out his hands for her to get down upon. Gratefully accepting his support, as soon as s he jumped down, he held her and swung her over his shoulder, both horses reins in his other hand. Ignoring her screams, he managed to tie both reins to a post with one hand.

"Itachi! Let me down!" She screamed, banging against his back. Itachi ignored her though and walked into the building. Giving up in thrashing about, she supposed she should just save her energy. He noticed this, but still wouldn't put her down. There was someone he wanted her to meet, and it was unlikely she would have come with him willingly to such a place if she knew full well what was happening.

They entered what seemed to be the entrance hall of the shrine temple thing, and she was amazed at how clean and non-dusty/dirty it was compared to what she imagined it would be like inside. It had seemed like a deserted place to her at first, but now it was likely that there was something living here. And from Itachi's actions, this person would be someone she would have to meet, happy about it or not.

Slowly, probably on purpose to piss her off, he walked towards a door, opened it, and went inside. Sakura couldn't see anything that was in front of Itachi, and could only see the stuff behind him.

In a sudden movement, she yelped as he set her down not so softly and grabbed her by the shoulders, turning her around to face the front, before giving her a shove forward and slamming the door behind him. Angry, she turned around again as soon as she regained her balance and kicked and punched the door, yelling at him.

It wasn't until her name was actually called that she realised there was another person in this room.

"Sakura?" The voice echoed in her head, the voice velvety and smooth, and sounded exactly like-

"Sasuke-kun?" She turned around and looked at him in shock. There he was, in front of her exactly like he was a year or two ago. Anger and Itachi aside, she couldn't help but smile happily at her old crush. But she had to check just to make sure.

"A-Are you really..? Are you really Sasuke-kun?" She asked, and he nodded quietly as he walked towards her, stopping when he was about a metre away from her. Tears forming, she was overjoyed. She walked to him to embrace him, but he stopped her by holding her at the shoulders, not letting her get any closer than his arms length to him. Happy feeling gone, she enquired what was wrong. This made him look away from her, wearing a facial expression she couldn't decipher. He looked like he was in pain, as if he wanted to do something that he knew he shouldn't.

"What's wrong Sasuke?" She asked softly, bringing her hands up to his own and placing them softly on his. He visibly flinched under her touch, and looked down sadly as she softly pulled his hands from her shoulder. Taking this chance, she approached him and hugged him tightly, resting her cheek at his collar bone and closing her eyes as she savoured this moment. He did nothing for a while, then brought his own arms up to hug her back, bringing her closer to him and holding her tightly and breathing in her vanilla perfume.

The moment didn't last long though as something inside of him appeared to have snapped, and he pushed her away from him gently. Turning around, he made sure that he couldn't see her anymore before uttering a small, "Gomen."

"Sorry for what Sasuke? What's happening?"

"I can't betray him." He replied simply, leaving Sakura extremely confused.

"Betray who?" She asked. He didn't answer. Biting her lip, she wondered what the best thing to do would be. She could try confusing him, but Uchihas hardly ever got confused. So she went with the guilt tactic.

"Did none of it matter then?" She asked, attempting to guilt trip him. He turned around and looked at her in confusion.

"Did what matter?"

"Us. The village. Did none of it matter at all to you?" She asked, and immediately knew that she had stepped on his uneasy spots. He was silent again, before closing his eyes and sighing.

"Do you hate him?" He asked out of the blue, attempting to change the subject. Sakura wouldn't have it though.

"Don't try to change the subject, answer my question." She demanded, watching him sigh once again and tell her that he can't betray him. Before she could ask about what the hell he was talking about, he repeated his question.

"Do you hate him?" He asked once more.

"Who's him?" She asked carefully.

"My brother." He finally said, leaving Sakura slightly surprised. Groaning, she muttered under her breath just loud enough for Sasuke to barely hear, "Damn Uchihas, always talking in riddles."

"We don't talk in riddles Sakura. Answer my question, do you hate my brother?" He countered. Sakura stood there quietly, trying to think. She had no clue whether or not she hated him. She guessed she should hate him, after all the things he had done to her, her friends and her village. But everything that had happened recently made her unable to hate him entirely, she was the type of person that was easily moved, and it had to take a lot of abuse to make her hate someone with her entire being. Sasuke watched her think, and cleared his throat intentionally to gather her attention once again. It was obvious to him that she didn't hate Itachi, but that wasn't the thing he needed to know most of all.

"Do you love him?" He asked seriously, earning a surprised look from Sakura. She hadn't been expecting anything like that from him, nor had she even given being in love with Itachi a single thought, most likely because it would never happen. Even though she didn't hate him, she had only just accepted the fact that he might possibly be human. There was no possible way that she loved him, and there was no reason why she should even be thinking about it.

"No. Why would I?" She answered, continuing with a slightly annoyed, "Why are you asking me all this Sasuke?" He sighed at her answer and resisted the urge to slam his head against a wall.

"He-" He started after a brief moment of thought, but was interrupted by a gentle click. He looked beyond and saw something, and Sakura turned around following his gaze. Itachi stood there puzzledly, wondering whether or not he had interrupted something. Ignoring the awkward silence between them, he spoke.

"Sasuke, Sakura, we're going back to Konoha." Sasuke seemed to object to this idea though.

"What? But I thought you came here to-"

"Sasuke. Hush." He said simply, "I also came to collect you."

"I'll just be extra hassle for you. I don't want to get in your way."

"You won't be, it'll be nice to spend some time together again." He concluded, and walked off towards the entrance of the building and leaving Sasuke and Sakura in the room again.

Sakura watched her husband's back retreat in the distance, but she turned around back to Sasuke when she heard him sigh defeatedly. He looked pretty annoyed, but somewhat happy. She however, wasn't happy at all.

"What the hell is going on?" She demanded to know; these two brothers were always and will always be so damn infuriating and confusing. Sasuke just hn'd back and shrugged, before collecting some pieces of clothing and packing them into a summoning scroll. Growing more annoyed, they were always like this.

She watched him pack his things sternly and noticed a small pendant that he had tied around his wrist. Smiling softly when she recognised it, she walked out the room content; she had made that pendant for him a long time ago. Calming down a little, she supposed that if Sasuke didn't find the need to tell her anything, then it obviously wasn't important enough for her to get annoyed over. Walking out of the room, out of the building and out into the forest again, she saw Itachi adoringly stroke the mane of one of the horses. Giggling lightly, she had never imagined Itachi to be an animal lover.

Sasuke came out of the building a short while after she came outside too, and then they set off back to Konoha. She had to share the horse with Itachi again, but the journey only took half a day. Sasuke had wondered why they were travelling by horse, but it seemed that the image alone of Itachi and Sakura sharing a horse with each other in close proximity explained it all, so he said nothing.

When they finally got home, Sakura felt slightly out of place. There she was, following her husband, who also happened to be the older brother of her first crush and former teammate. When they got to the entrance room, Itachi stopped suddenly and turned to them to speak.

"Sakura. You'll continue staying in the same room as me; Sasuke will use your room. I had it fixed whilst we were absent." He explained, before disappearing off, leaving Sasuke and Sakura alone once again.

"Eh? _Continue_ staying?" He asked curiously, his voice assuming. She couldn't tell whether or not he was angry or happy with that, since he sounded pretty enthusiastic but looked pretty down. Shrugging and telling herself that she couldn't be bothered, she decided it was time for a little payback for his ambiguous answers.

"Well it's only _natural_ since he _is _my _husband_. Why? You were expecting me to not hug him whilst I sleep and use his arm as my pillow? I thought you were better than that Sasuke!" She sneered, earning an annoyed stare from Sasuke, of which Sakura found extremely amusing.

"What have you two been doing?" He demanded to know, but Sakura was having too much fun.

"Heh, that's a secret between me and my hubby." She giggled to make it sound more realistic, and it worked. The frown on Sasuke's face was priceless.

"Sakura… Just tell me."

"No. Why should I?" She rebutted, she probably knew the reason why, but she just wanted to hear it again after so long.

"Because I-" He started, before their attention was drawn to someone apparently having a coughing fit.

Running to where it sounded like it was coming from, Sasuke stopped when he saw his brother on the floor, coughing out blood into his hands. Sakura looked pale, and immediately tied her hair up. Rushing towards him, she ordered Sasuke to rest him against something straight so he could sit up and not choke on his own blood. Sasuke, not one to appreciate being told what to do, did what she asked since he could guess that she knew a hell lot more than he did in the medical field.

Itachi was struggling to breathe, and Sakura immediately started to locate the source of the bleeding, which she found almost straight away. Directing her chakra, (which was unsealed due to Itachi's energy going poof) to give his cells a regenerating boost, she told Sasuke to hold him down so that he wouldn't rip her patchwork up again by coughing hard. Slowly, things started whizzing around him and sounds drowned out. He felt a great chill fly by him from the centre of his body, and felt extremely cold.

The last things Itachi saw were his brother, Sakura, and darkness.

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Hope you enjoyed the chapter XD Like I said at the start, quality dropped at the end. Merry belated xmas and I hope you enjoy your holidays :) I have even more exams after I come back from hols :/ yay...

REVIEW PEOPLE D= Otherwise I don't know if Im writing good or utter crap, and I also won't know where to improve. I might be writing something you hate more than anything, but I won't know unless you gimme feedback cause without feedback I don't know where I've gone wrong, or even if you read my story ;~;

Love you all :D Baiii 3 *will try to update faster*

And no -_- Itachi does not die... in this chapter. Since everyone knows I have a habit of killing characters DX Im not gonna kill him XD ...probably

And LOL XD I forgot about sakura's sealed chakra :X Thanks tettsui for noticing it for me XD Imma just say that it unsealed because he started going into a coughing fit and went unconscious (Like in rpg magic games :D if you kill the caster the effect goes away xD)


	7. Chapter 7

Sorry for the long update time =[ Thats the first thing XD I had so many gcse exams, and I still have 8 left. Though its not so bad, since at the start of may I had at least 18 exams to go (I think its 19 if I count the german speaking exam). I only have 3 japanese exams left, 2 german, 2 math and 1 RE. GO ME XD

I hope you like this chapter. Its short, even though I wanted to make it longer to make up for the fact it took so long to update. I'm really sorry about that =[ I just felt like I needed to end this chapter where it did, because the next chapter is an important one.

Please tell me what you think about the chapter, even if its something bad, I'll try to improve on it ^^''

love you all : wish me luck on my exams *puts little heart emote in XD*

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Returning Favours

Chapter 7

His Smile

Written by eifi

* * *

_She watched him with a dumbfounded expression, her eyes wide as she couldn't quite understand what this man was saying to her. She saw his lips forming the words, she heard the syllables flow out like music, but she couldn't fit them all together. Slowly and steadily, she felt her hands and arms go limp by her side, a chilly wind brushing past her body and grasping and stealing any body warmth that was exposed through the surface of her skin, taking her breath away as she gasped for air. Falling to the dusted ground, the little feeling that she had left in her arms were used wastefully as she reached out for him, watching him conceal himself behind purple and black blobs that surely couldn't be any good. _

_Delusional now, she did nothing but gasp for air as she closed her eyes, trying to shoo away the annoying trickle of sweat that had found its way down the side of her head in the skirmish that she had trying to fight for air. Wincing in pain, a steady drumming through her ear drums commenced, as well as the equivalent of fourteen loud ambulance sirens shrieking through her skull and giving her one immense headache. What made matters worse was that somehow, _somehow_, her breakfast was making its way up her throat, threatening to call SOS through the exit of her mouth. Fighting back the rising bile, tears formed as she fought back the urge to vomit endlessly. It took a while but, eventually the disgusting feelings dimmed down and she was left on the forest floor struggling to breathe. _

_By now, she had already realised that she was under genjutsu, but she didn't quite understand why the hell she couldn't get out of it already. The amount of times she had said KAI already had to have reached around forty or something. She watched with one eye open his idle sitting posture, probably just an added part of the genjutsu. _

_Judging on how strong this genjutsu was and how it was obviously designed to paralyze whichever victim fell into this genjutsu, she had to conclude that she was a pretty retarded retard if she couldn't even see that there was an extremely powerful (and most likely dangerous) ninja in front of her drinking water out of her own cantine. Though, she had to applaud that the guy had made a genjutsu technique that not even she could get out of. But then again, it meant that she was probably going to die. Any second now. _

_Thinking forward, she guessed that she'll know when she was dead when the genjutsu was already over. But how would she know that? What if she was dead already? With a huge sharp blade stabbed through her stomach or her head chopped off. Ew. She didn't want to be bleeding to death in a stupid cruddy illusion then waking up to find out she was dead. Frowning , she mustered up all the strength she had to push herself back up into a sitting position, and crawled to the closest tree. She leant on it and coughed, half expecting blood to come pouring out. But it didn't. In fact, suddenly, she was in a field of flowers. Biting back the urge to say how cliché, she sighed in relief as a warm but strange feeling overcame her, taking away every single worry that she had until she felt nothing at all. Slowly, she drifted, and she thought no more._

_Staring at her calm sleeping state, Itachi sighed in relief as he leant back on his supporting arms, looking up at the forest tree leaves as he yawned sleepily. He didn't think he'd have to meet any ninja in the battlefield, but then again, he had just met a pretty high ranking kunoichi. Even if her skin and hair was covered with mud, twigs and leaves, it was pretty hard to miss a natural born beauty walk pass you, especially when that beauty was so obviously the apprentice of the current Godaime of Konohagakure. Remembering his contract with his old village, and the new promise he had with this young girl 'Sakura', he had to think carefully of what to do next._

_He wouldn't kill her, that was for sure. He may have killed his entire family, but he had his morals and his manners from when he was taught strictly how to deal with other people. Although it didn't seem much if one brought up the one rare occasion where he murdered everyone that he loved and held dear, he wasn't someone who would betray someone who had earnestly and honestly tried to help him the best that they could. __**Especially**__ if they were a pretty pink haired kunoichi who had the most interesting viewpoint that he had come across, or at least interesting to him. She was just something who was sick and tired of fighting, just like him, but someone who would still fight._

_Contemplating what to do next, he turned his head to his side casually as he appreciated the footsteps that approached him, and looked at innocent as he could muster. When Kisame came into the light of the fire, he looked away childishly as if he had no further interest in him. His gaze returned to the kunoichi, who was also the object of Kisame's confusion._

"_What's going on here?" He asked politely, his voice being cut short by the night silence, "I thought you said you were going to hide out, not flirting with cute little dangerous kunoichis."_

_Itachi looked at him expressionlessly, replying simply, "She thought I was a civilian." _

_He obviously thought that that would be all it would take for Kisame to understand, and he was perfectly correct. Kisame took one look at Itachi, focusing on the parts of his body that were supposed to be injured, and saw no further bleeding or bruising. Raising an eyebrow, he could guess that the kunoichi Itachi had had a run in with was the girl that they were sent to capture and/or assassinate. Sighing, he heaved Samehada over his shoulder and onto his back, before trudging off slowly to the opposite direction of Konoha. He already knew Itachi's thought process; the kid had way too many morals when he wasn't forced to do something like kill some random Akatsuki traitor or something. Guessing he'd fulfil his good deed for the day or just try to avoid getting into a bitchy quarrel, he left the camp quietly, leaving Itachi to do whatever he needed to do._

_Unfortunately though, Itachi hadn't even thought that far. He was too sleepy, and way too tired to even think of anything but going to sleep. It was a total bother, but he forced himself to stay awake as he disguised himself as an _actual_ civilian and carried Sakura's body to a place where an ally of hers would be able to find her easily. Looking at her one more time, a ghost of a smile softly made its way to Itachi's lips, before he pressed his fingers on her forehead so that she forgot what had happened after she got put into a genjutsu, and broke the genjutsu so she was just simply sound asleep. _

_He hurried to the borders of Konoha, noting how he felt no more pain in his lower abdomen where he had previously had suffered from a few cuts, and quickly found a man who wore and brandished his konoha headband like a proud child. Wordlessly, he shoved her body into his arms, watching with amusement the confusion of the bumbling man. The man looked down at the unconscious kunoichi, and turned as if to look back at the man who had pushed her into his arms, but the man had disappeared as quickly as he arrived, just like a wandering ghost._

* * *

Sakura yawned. She hadn't slept so well for so long as it felt like it had been years since she had slept with her chakra still in her, as well as the fact she could sleep with no fear keeping her awake, and she had to say it was one good nap. The only problem was, she hadn't been able to enjoy the comfort of her long missed chakra since unfortunately, as soon as she woke up, her lovely husband woke up too and resealed her chakra. Sighing, she kind of regretted not using her brain and running the hell away from the Uchiha siblings, instead of letting Sasuke drag them both back to Itachi's original house. It would have been a great idea to split, apart from the fact Sasuke would have probably grabbed her and beaten her up, before waiting for his brother to wake up and tell him so he could beat her up even more. But then again, it would have probably been the best chance that she had. Maybe she could have kicked Sasuke's ass, just maybe. But there wasn't any point in worrying about it now, she had bigger problems.

The fact that her husband was part of the Akatsuki and now was ill was one of those big problems. Maybe they wouldn't find out, she prayed to hell that they wouldn't, because that would mean Deidara would come over and screw her over for the reason that he was one, big, crazy lunatic. A big crazy lunatic that would most definitely kill her if he found out Itachi couldn't really protect her anymore or get him back for killing her. Ugh, that whole coughing out blood thing better have been a one off occasion, if not, that meant Itachi was ill, _seriously _ill. That meant she'd either have to spend even _more_ time with him to try to heal the idiot in attempt to make sure her ass isn't blown up or because he'd force her too, or that Itachi would just become weaker and weaker and she would have her ass blown up by her favourite explosive using terrorist.

She sat sitting upright with her legs crossed and her hands set behind her as she leant on them lazily, staring at the wall with unmatched concentration and determination, trying to think of a way to avoid being exploded up into a gazillion little chunks and pieces. Similarly, Itachi was staring at her, lay down on the bed on his side with his cheek resting on his hand as he watched her with amusement how she looked when she was trying to meditate. It was kind of cute how she was pretty much glaring at the wall, and it was also pretty cute that she hadn't noticed him staring at her for quite a while now. He was counting the minutes that it took for her to notice, since she seemed to be that absorbed into her thoughts.

A few moments later, Sakura finally realised that he was indeed, staring at her with the same intensity that she had been staring at the wall. Screaming in shock, it took all that she had to not fall off the bed from her fright. Itachi managed to prevent the laughter though, the pain in his chest made it impossible for him to laugh. Unless of course he was extremely masochist. Which he well and truly could be.

Glaring at her smirking husband, she demanded to know what he was doing. He replied simply, "Looking at you."

Sakura glared at him even more, a vicious pout making its way to her lips. "Do you know how much that SCARED me?" She hissed through her teeth, getting even more annoyed as he raised his eyebrows slightly and his grin became wider.

"Oh? And did you ever think about how scared that poor wall would be with you staring a hole into it?" He said in reply, and she swore if he wasn't ill like some old man she would have punched that smirk off of his face. What was it with Uchihas and managing to piss her off. Before she could even answer back though, he butted in.

"Why? Were you expecting me to be looking at you and thinking dirty thoughts? Pervert." He said, and all of a sudden she didn't care whether or not he was ill. Instantly she threw her fist towards him, aiming for his face. It would been perfect if he hadn't dodged, and instead she hit her fist on the metal railing, leaving a dent and her shuddering with pain. Wincing at the dents, Itachi decided he should always dodge her punches from then on. His attention darted back to Sakura as she squealed in pain at her now damaged knuckles, biting back the tears of pain as the impact vibrating throughout her body.

Itachi crawled closer to her, putting one hand on her shoulder blade and making her lean closer to him, whilst putting another hand on her knuckle. Despite the fact that metal post was _supposed_ to have been his own head, he did feel rather sorry for her as she had no chakra to heal herself or to numb the pain. He instantly regretted it though, as as soon as he brought her closer to himself, his face came into sharp contact with a certain Sakura scented pillow. And as much as he was thrilled that she wanted to give him a gift of her _only_ pillow, he had too much pride to let her get away with smacking him round the head with said pillow.

Grabbing the nearest pillow he could find, he immediately aimed for her face and smacked it against her, earning a surprised shriek from Sakura. He didn't hit her too hard, plus it was a pillow, so it shouldn't have hurt her that much. Nevertheless, her face went beet red, and she lunged towards him pillow in tow. By now, he couldn't stop himself laughing at her, coughing a little from the pain, and that was exactly when Sakura whacked him back. This time, it was her turn to laugh at him, whilst he grabbed his pillow once again and tried to block another attack from Sakura. Both now giggling and chuckling like crazy, they didn't stop laughing until Sakura almost fell off of the bed, where Itachi literally had to dive forward to catch her. In gratitude, she whacked him once again around the head with her pillow, roaring with laughter as he glared at her with mock seriousness. As she giggled in his arms, a brilliant idea popped up in his head, and he started tickling her for revenge. After all, the Uchiha clan were all about getting revenge right? Surely tickling someone would be an acceptable punishment rather than the normal revenge type ideas.

Sakura, now screaming with laughter and giggles, she begged for him to stop, she was beyond ticklish. He didn't stop though, it was too much fun having her at his tickling mercy.

"I-Itachi! S- ahahahaha stop alr- already!" She breathed out, her cheeks starting to hurt from the constant laughter. Itachi wouldn't stop though, not even when Sasuke entered their room and stared at them confusedly and wondering what the hell they were doing.

"Give up, it's my win." He said, smirking that stupid Uchiha smirk again and continuing the process of tickling Sakura. He found her weak spot apparently, the lower part of her side waist was especially ticklish for her it seemed. Sakura seemed to have a slight complaint about this though, and even though she was laughing so much that there were now several tears in her eyes, she managed to coordinate her hands towards the pillow to whack Itachi around the head again, giving her a split second to flip herself off of the bed and run across the room. Sasuke raised an eyebrow when Sakura ran behind him, pillow held snugly in her arms in front of her as she pouted and focused on Itachi, probably scared he'd tickle her again. But the look in her eyes showed more triumph rather than fear, as she smirked and triumphantly declared that she was the winner.

"Heh, I win! I hit you last and got away too!" She said proudly, as if she should win an award or something. Itachi just chuckled at her antics, debating in his head whether or not he should ruin her happy moment for her. Feeling particularly sadistic that day (compared to other non sadistic feeling days), he decided to correct her in her victory.

"I'm afraid you're wrong. You left the bed area hence that's an automatic forfeit." He stated simply, smirking arrogantly as he slid off of the bed and walked towards Sasuke.

Sakura fumed, claiming that it wasn't fair. Before realising what exactly she had been doing and exactly who with. Not knowing how the hell Itachi managed to distract her to the point they entered a pillow fight, she simply blushed pure scarlet at the shear outrage of managing to be pulled into his pace.

Scowling at him as he approached, she seemed to inch further back even more as Itachi stood in front of Sasuke with a curious look on his face. It wasn't that it was necessarily scary, she was just bewildered somewhat that Sasuke was still here, and had probably witnessed all of it.

"Aniki." Sasuke decided to stop them in their fun and games, and ask what he came to ask for. Itachi replied with silence, waiting for Sasuke to continue, which he continued to do.

"What will we do about your… attack?" He worded it carefully. Itachi looked down carefully, then back at Sasuke, inhaling tiredly as he shrugged.

"I don't know." He answered honestly, sending chills down Sakura's spine. Maybe it was because to her and anyone else, Itachi was someone who would always have the answers to everything, that her heart seemed to stop. The bare thought of even him saying that he was ill made it so much worse, before he had admitted it, there was hope that the big badass Uchiha Itachi _didn't_ have an illness.

Maybe it was because the bare thought of having the strongest and smartest person she knew vulnerable that the blood in her veins froze. Or maybe, just maybe, she shivered in fright because she didn't _want_ him to be ill, she didn't _want_ him to suffer, she didn't _want_ him to disappear from her grasp. She didn't want him to die or be ill, just the thought terrified her. The fact that just imagining him in pain wrenched her heart. Her grip loosening on the pillow that she was holding, her expression turned sombre as she gazed deeply at the tatami floor. If Itachi noticed that, he certainly didn't show it.

"We'll leave it for now, if it occurs again then we'll find a medic." He said, before mumbling something that only Sasuke and himself would be able to hear. It sucked that Sakura wasn't close enough to them so that she could hear them, but she had something else on her mind.

"Um…" She mumbled, swallowing her words as soon as she regretted trying to get their attention. Both of the brothers turned their heads to her, giving her their full attention.

"What is it Sakura?" It was Sasuke who spoke, his tone was a little brutal, like it had always been, but with a slight edge of softness. Sakura fidgeted with her hands a little whilst biting her lips.

"Ne… Never mind. It's nothing." She said quietly, before looking away from both of them, once again showing the meeker side of her character. An awkward silence lingered, until Sasuke decided to leave.

"I want to get back to the temple by sunset, so I should leave now." He stated, before turning around and walking to the nearest exit, which of course, was the door (A/N not the window). Sakura hesitated, before taking a step forward and calling after Sasuke.

"Sasuke-kun…" She started, but she couldn't continue. She wanted to tell him not to go, to ask him to stay, but she somehow already knew the answer he would give. Sasuke turned around to look at her thoughtfully, before turning around and putting a hand in the air.

"Ja na, aniki, Sakura." He said, then closed the door, leaving Itachi and her alone.

Strangely, it felt more uneasy without Sasuke, and more awkward or painful to be in the same room as her husband than ever before. The awkward silence that Sasuke had the privilege of running the hell away from was still lingering, until Sakura's stomach decided to bail on her and gurgle in a way that was so unladylike, even Itachi had to laugh.

"Shall we get something to eat then?" He said, a gentle grin as he chuckled at her forming, introducing Sakura to a personality that Sakura never would have guessed he had. Blushing a little at his charming proposal, she couldn't help but accept his invitation.

* * *

Alina made this, made me laugh and I wanted to share it all with you LOL. I think the humiliation bit was cause of the pillow :3 Alina can tell me off later if its wrong XD

Please review :) Its nice to know that you read it, and whatever you think of the story, or if I can improve. If you can tell me whats wrong that would be awesome o-o Cause... I suck at english. XD (YAY FOR FAILING MY ENGLISH GCSE EXAMS LOL! Also, burning anthology time \o/)

F: This is fugaku Uchiha speaking (alina: yo! old man you're typing...) I would like to know your name and your address so that I may send my awesome ninja/dead friends after you for humiliating my elder son. Just for Itachi, I don't particularly care about the other one.

Sasuke: why father! why?

F: look a tomato. now be a good boy and shut up already.


	8. Chapter 8

Phew! Its been sooo busy xD Math exams over! woohoo! 3 japanese and 2 german to go! Ick xD

This chapter is short I must say, and you may think it is pure fluff, but it does have importance in the character progression, after you read it, you'll be able to guess why, hopefully. I was high on jammy donuts, angel slices and viennise whirls or whatever they are from , so it has a lot of my twisted sense of humour in this. In fact, I problem still AM high on whatever I just said since I ate the same thing around 5 minutes ago.

I hope you enjoy, REVIEW! Next chapter will be awesome~

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Returning Favours

Chapter 8

Immaturity

Written by eifi

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It had been eight months since Itachi had his 'attack', and 8 months since Sakura had seen Sasuke, and currently she was a little tipsy. She was bored, sue her, and she had a little alcoholic sweet that she found in Itachi's desk drawer since her husband had gone off to a random get together or something. Sighing, it was a change compared to the previous months.

Surprisingly, the time had flown by quickly, at least, much more quickly than Sakura would have thought it would have gone. She couldn't exactly say the months were amazingly fun, it was sort of more like 'amazingly preoccupied' and 'kept busy' by her husband.

Akatsuki had so many more 'meetings', all over the world, but usually whenever they demanded Itachi to come, apparently it was an order to bring his wife along with him. It wasn't all bad, if anything, it was enjoyable, especially since Konan had been generous enough to give Itachi a little extra pocket money to take her out to many festivals, hot springs, restaurants, theme parks, and even tourist guide tours since Sakura had been a tad upset about the fact she never got to go to the hot springs the first time they met. Needless to say, Sakura was pretty happy with sightseeing, though a little guilty since all of her friends were probably worrying about her, whilst she was having a water balloon fight with Itachi.

Surprisingly, she had gotten a little more used to having Itachi around. He pissed her off at times, well, a lot, but when he wasn't actually angry, he was quite charming and sweet. For example, she had never actually realised until recently, that whenever they _did_ go to festivals, restaurants, parks and theme parks, he would choose what Sakura would always like. Based on a whim or not, it was actually so hard to notice that he was eating the cabbage that she hated for her, choosing rides that she subtlely hinted that she wanted to go on, and even winning the huge teddy bear that she really wanted for her at some festival booth.

Over time, she had realised that Itachi was turning soft. Super soft. Soft and squishy in fact. The other day she had tested this out, she had waited _all night_ for him to come home from whatever diplomatic meeting he had that hadn't required her presence, waiting quietly behind the door of their bedroom. When he came in, she did all she could to attempt to take him by surprise and rugby tackle him by leaping into the air for an aerial attack, until he turned around as she was in midair and smirked.

Chuckling a little, he turned around towards her and reached out for her wrists, pulling them towards him and then pulling her into a bear hug.

"If all you wanted to do was hug me because you missed me so much, you could have just asked, _Sakura_." He chuckled, making said person's cheeks violently turn red with both embarrassment and anger. Whilst she struggled out of his hold though, she couldn't deny the fact he smelt good. _Really_ good. And on that note, she had to conclude that she too, was becoming soft. She would no longer cower in fear of her husband, apart from certain occasions, which usually occurred after she had dinner with his other Akatsuki 'associates', as for some bizarre reason that would never be explained to Sakura, Itachi would always enter 'Jigglypuff' mode when she woke up. And that was the polite way of saying, Itachi has just entered bitch mode, time of the month mode, and the old classic, ANGRY mode.

It was always so annoying when he got pissed off at her, since he just gave her the cold shoulder, and it brought back the unpleasant feeling of her having to feel petrified whenever he even stole a glance at her. What pissed her off even more though, was when he would never explain to her what she had done wrong, it was within her personality to get angry when someone gets angry at her for no reason at all, and in her books, if her asshole of a husband didn't explain **why** he was angry, then that was equivalent to not having a reason for being angry at her.

But her anger would fly away within seconds when Itachi would pout at her slightly and apologise for his earlier actions. Although, it did happen quite often. Still, the gesture was enough to break her heart every time, and she'd forget the annoyance as quickly as it had came. And that was the biggest and most worrying sign, that indeed, she was becoming soft. Main problem? She was beginning to like him. No, not even that, she was beginning to get fond of him, _overly_ fond of him, so much so that she began to long for his presence. Which definately couldn't be a good sign.

So to conclude, she had finally realised, that over the past 8 months, somehow, she had managed to get used to Itachi, stop hating and fearing him as much as she used to, and now even enjoy his company to the point that she can't wait till his next meeting is over and for when he came home.

It then became obvious, that she needed to put a stop to this. This husband of hers killed tons of her friends, ruined the life of his brother who surprisingly doesn't seem to angry at him for killing all of his family members and his best friend, and also theoretically ruined her life in the process too. She should really hate this guy, and so she came up with a wonderful plan that may or may not get her killed in the process of trying to get Itachi to get super angry at her in attempt to make her hate him again.

It had been quite a while since Itachi had unsealed her chakra, he said that he trusted her enough not to be stupid enough, and that she had a right to do whatever she wanted with her chakra so long as it wasn't a nuisance to him, (he worded it differently, but that was the general gist of it). The only exceptions were when she had to come along with him to an Akatsuki meeting, for safety precautions apparantly. And so together with the fact that she knew that Itachi was going to be out for at least another 3 hours, it was the perfect chance to put her plan into action.

Grabbing her handbag, she took some of the money Itachi had piled up for her over the months, she guessed it was her pocket money, and casually sneaked a few snacks. Then, she ran off out of the house as far as she could pumping chakra into her legs and feet, not in any particular direction, and found herself near a bar. Shrugging, she guessed it would be good enough if she just hung out there until Itachi found out she was missing. Then the plan of Itachi getting pissed off whilst he tried to look for her and thinking that she had escaped from him once and for all would work, and all of her problems would be solved (temporarily until she realised that being terrified of her husband wasn't such a great idea). Of course, for now at least, she wasn't stupid enough to get drunk whilst trying to piss Itachi off since that would probably just make the plan backfire, (in her opinion at least). Plus, using her chakra to burn off the excess alcohol would make him find her faster, because she was sure that a bar was the one place Itachi wouldn't look for her in, unless he sensed her chakra with the sharingan. She even had the initiative to mask her chakra up, he'll never know what hit him.

The main idea was that the longer he looked for her, the more pissed off he'd get. The only flaws in her self-proclaimed fool-proof plan were that she had forgotten to take into account, that Itachi was quite patient when it came to her, and Itachi had also told her previously some time ago that she was allowed to freely walk in and out the house to do whatever she liked in the city as long as she didn't get herself killed and that she was home by acceptable and sensible hours. And of course, she forgot that he had a nose that was about thirty times better than Kiba's. And that she had the attention span of a goldfish.

Therefore, it wasn't surprising when Itachi, half an hour later, during of which he had managed to come home early, felt the empty room of the presence of Sakura being missing, and went out to look for her, found a half drunk chakra burning Sakura who seemed to be trying to pick up a fight with a cueball around three times the size of her. Thankfully though, the effect of alcohol had been reduced significantly since she was burning it off with chakra, but it still didn't hide the fact that she was drunk.

"Sakura." He said simply, managing to get everyone's attention bar the one he wanted attention from. As soon as said cueball saw him, he backed off and bowed, before running the hell away from the bar. Sakura was so out of it, that she didn't even notice Itachi until he picked her up, bridal style.

"HEY! What the fuck do you think you're doing Itachi!" She shrieked, scrambling out of his arms very effectively, and managing to jump down onto her own two feet. Itachi just raised an eyebrow suspiciously.

"What do you think **i'm** doing? What do you think _**you're **_doing Sakura, it's eleven at night." He said, crossing his arms for extra emphasis. She frowned.

"Oh, I'm sorry mother, I forgot my bedtime was 6 hours ago." She said sarcastically, mimicking Itachi's actions of crossing his arms.

Rolling his eyes, he huffed. "You're just being immature now." She froze when he said that, and for a second, she looked as if she was about to cry, but that was swiftly replaced with a loud indignant and immature remark.

"No I'm not! YOU are." She said, smirking proudly at herself for thinking of such a clever remark, whilst Itachi looked at her stupefied. His shock was quickly shaken away and replaced with an arrogant smirk.

"Oh really? Well I'm sorry little one but it's time for you to go to bed." He said, his voice laced with sarcasm and mocking tones. By now, three quarters of the bar had evacuated, whilst a handful stayed behind, mainly because two of them were an open mouthed Ino, and another was a shocked Shikamaru, hiding behind a table.

"Well I'm ever so sorry mother, I don't want to go to bed, I want to go **home**." Sakura said proudly, purposely ignoring the fact that Itachi looked like he wanted to hit himself on the head. Instead, he sighed, and instead picked her up again, ignoring her futile protests.

"Right then, let's take you home your highness, before you make a mess." He said whilst smirking, Sakura just gaped at his assumption before struggling even more.

"No! I want to go home!" She cried out, before Itachi hushed her and sighed, going back home without even arguing back, ignoring Ino and Shikamaru's agape mouths.

Once he had made good distance from the bar, he slowed down, watching out for any strangers, then at Sakura's calm face. She seemed to be looking forward from where her head was resting at his chest, before yawning sleepily.

"Took you long enough." She murmured into his coat. He looked at her funnily, but remained silent, urging her to continue.

"I waited all night for you to come back and find me…" She mumbled under her breath, yawning again before sighing. Her eyes were closed now, and if not for the fact he knew she wouldn't sleep at a time like this, he would have thought she had entered dream land. Still, he apologised.

"I'm sorry Sakura, I didn't mean to leave you alone for that long." He said, his voice was gentle and calming, not at all like the snarky tone he had on earlier when teasing her. Sakura shook her head before tilting it a little, making herself comfortable in his arms.

"It's okay." She said quietly, and added a further, "…'ts not your fault in the first place," that if it were anyone but Itachi, wouldn't be audible at all. He didn't reply to this, these situations with women were things that he did his utter most to stay away from, because he had no idea what to do.

It stayed quite quiet as Itachi walked leisurely back home, until Sakura murmured something randomly.

"Ne Itachi?" She said softly.

"Hn? What's up?" He asked equally as softly. At the sound of his voice, she shuffled slightly so she pressed her face against his chest. Earning a confused look, she carried on.

"You smell good." She concluded, before closing her eyes and deciding to sleep a little, which Itachi was very thankful for, as well as the darkness that night provided him. He didn't want her to see him in such an embarrassing state, blushing at her most likely thoughtless but honest comment. Taking a deep breath, she really didn't know what she did to him. And unfortunately, she reopened her eyes after giving up on the whole sleeping idea, and continued to try to make what she called a conversation.

"Why won't you speak?" She asked softly, pouting slightly in the dark, though Itachi could see her easily as he had activated his sharingan since it was night. He thought a little before replying.

"You want me to speak?" He asked, not understanding what she was thinking. All she did was shuffle a little before saying simply, "Your voice is sexy." Earning yet another blush, he made it a rule not to respond to Sakura whilst she was half asleep/drunk.

A few moments more of quiet, and they were already back home. Itachi let out a well deserved sigh of relief as he plopped her down onto their bed, and left to take a shower.

After that, he put on his sleeping garments, and threw Sakura hers.

"Sakura… Put them on." He said softly, crawling to her on the bed trying to shake her gently so that she'd wake up. "It's not very good if you fall asleep in that."

All he received as a reply was a rebellious, "Mrhhmmm…" the kind that kids would make when they didn't want to wake up. He sighed, and started pulling the clothes that she had on from her body, bar her undergarments. Of course, we was looking the other way, and did everything he could to reduce skin to skin contact. Sakura shivered from the cold, and brought the blankets closer to her. He smirked, pulling the blankets away from her and earning an annoyed shriek. He did nothing but throw her her sleeping clothes at her, telling her to put them on.

Grumpily and very slowly, she did, though with the upper half she seemed to have trouble with getting one of her arms through the arm hole, so she gave up and left it, lying back down to bed to sleep. Sighing for what felt like the sixtieth time that evening, he got up and forced her arm through the arm hole. Finally content with her attire, he got into bed as well, pulling the blankets over both of them. Finally time that he can relax and sleep.

Until of course, it occurred to Itachi that Sakura was slowly but surely, inching towards him. He watched it happen in curiosity, not know what to do. Surely she wasn't going t-

Okay. She was. She grabbed hold of his torso and rested her head on his chest, whilst lifting a leg up and leaving it over his own. Grimacing at the fact that Itachi now knew he wasn't going to have any sleep that night, he prepared to brace himself for the worse.

Meanwhile, Ino and Shikamaru were pondering whether or not to go to their house, but decide against it since Itachi would probably murder them for disrupting their sleep. They had decided they would visit in the morning.

* * *

In the morning, Sakura woke up on the comfiest pillow ever, and declared that that was the best night of sleep she had had for a long time. In her sleepy state, she failed to notice a dark eyed Itachi emerge from the bed, who looked frail in a way that he'd collapse at any second. When she did notice, she smiled brightly, greeting him with a simple good morning. **Someone** was obviously in a good mood, Itachi thought annoyedly. And that was when a thought hit him.

Revenge time.

"Sakura?" He said, acting as if he were slightly ill in attempt to get closer to him. It worked, because Sakura seemed pretty convinced, and only replied in a soft, "What's wrong?"

When he came close enough, he closed his eyes whilst resting his hands on her shoulders. Sakura looked at him puzzledly, until he moved forward and placed his lips on hers.

At first, he was going to pull back as soon as he did it, but who could blame him for not stopping when she started putting her hands through his hair and moaning seductively. She literally made the phrase 'Revenge is sweet'.

Kissing her gently, he bit down onto her bottom lip to gain entrance to her mouth as she gasped, caressing her cheek with one hand and with the other supporting her and pulling her towards him by her waist, then pushing her slightly down into the bed. She tasted like… alcohol, as expected, but her hair smelt of vanilla. Distancing himself from her temporarily so that they could both breathe, she looked at him dazily before her eyes widened and she sobered up. Mouth slightly open, trying to say something, she found she couldn't as her face became visibly more red.

Itachi looked at her, waiting for her to respond in anyway, and she did.

She screamed, pushed him over down onto the bed and ran out of the door and closing it. Strangely, she didn't go any further than from behind the door in her traumatised state, with only one thing on her mind.

"Oh. My. God."

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Well, hope you liked that super short chapter. Like I said at the beginning xD It does hold a purpose, and its not just pure fluff. Its just part of me trying to make Sakura seem more used to him, and on the love'o'meter, slightly towards the =D side of things xD

REVIEW PEOPLE! I LIKE THEM D: IT MAKES ME FEEL SPECIAL! MAKE A FANFIC AUTHOR FEEL SPECIAL TODAY BY CLICKING 2 BUTTONS AND TYPING A :D yay IN IT =D


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